Film Noir (2007)

It's style over substance in this luridly entertaining animated movie. It boasts black and white visuals with just a little color thrown in for style (think Sin City), tons of classic noir imagery (piles of just smoked cigarettes, 50's style diners, strip clubs), and an amnesiac protag who narrates his own story in a worn down voice that sort of says "Seen it all, heard it all and still don't know what to make of it..." It takes place in LA (largely around Hollywood) and also has a lot of nudity and sex in it, especially for an animated movie. This one is for those who like dark gritty settings and messy complicated plots.


Please note: Entries about media reviewed in this blog are written from the perspective that the reader has already seen the work in question and desires further commentary or explanation. Plot twists and endings will sometimes be examined. Though in the case of this film, I'll try and keep spoilers to a minimum, being that it isn't a major work.

The man wakes up lying in front of the Hollywood sign to find blood on his hands, and a dead man nearby with bullet between his eyes. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. A quick examination reveals that the dead man is a cop, and with no one else around, deduction tells us that our main character is the killer. He flees the scene quickly hearing reports of shots fired on the police radio, driving away in the dead man's car. He cannot find any ID but it's clear that someone wants him dead, and he has no idea who or why. Not knowing who he is, what to do, or even where he is going, he muses to himself: "One thing was for certain, I was the bad guy in this story."There comes a point a while later in the tale, where our main character reasons that if he'd had a choice between being lucky or good, he'd chose lucky every time. I can't help but think this guy really does have that kind of luck too given what happens over the course of the film, and two of the biggest examples occur right towards the beginning. The first of which is when he decides to visit the house of the man he just killed, figuring that at least that guy wouldn't be home, only to find half the police force and the guy's family waiting there to surprise him with a party. Only some quick thinking gets him out of that jam. The second occurs at the office of Sam Rueben, where he's led by one of the few clues he has amongst his possessions in the car. Upon leaving the office after getting the run around by the secretary, he is called by that very same girl who mistakes his voice for Rueben's (it appears he has Rueben's phone, and neither he nor she knew it). "That guy you were looking for was just here" she says. "Who?" "David Hudson, you idiot!" And so now our protagonist has a name, or at least an identity people believe him to be.

We follow the man around as he gets lucky again and again (women he cannot remember want to sleep with him, old accomplices give him help and valuable info/items even though he doesn't know what to do with them right away) and also has several very unlucky encounters (he's chased around and gets beaten up a few times, and even has armed men in a helicopter trying to kill him). "The more I learned about David Hudson, the more I realized what a despicable guy he was." we hear him think at one point. We see him make attempts to change the way the people around him see him and act towards him, as when he refuses to whip and beat a woman who knew him and is an addict to both heroin and S&M. He confides in some, needing at the very least someone to trust him, and conceals himself to others, bluffing about how much he knows to get away again and again. He gets caught by the cops, only to have fate step in again with another strange turn when the men who come to kill him end up inadvertently providing him a chance to escape.It all leads to a safe-deposit box that he at first is unable to get into, and the revelation that the one out to kill him is publicly a well regarded philanthropist but secretly is a corrupt and perverse man who wants what is in that box too, as well our protagonist dead. We also learn that our central character is not who he thinks he is in one very startling scene.

The conclusion to the story comes after the standard fare for this kind of flick: shootouts, deals with the police, recovery of what's in the box. We're told the identity of our central character, though thinking carefully about the reasoning behind it, it has its holes: "Did this guy really not know there'd be risks doing such a thing?" I asked myself immediately after learning who the man really is and why he has the face he does.
The style is really laid on thick in this movie, and done well for the most part, the atmosphere really drips of classic themes mixed with neo-noir elements. The action, however, isn't always handled in a believable manner (the henchman in the helicopter seems dangerous and cool at first, but absolutely defies logic, and seems more of pest by the end of the movie). I was reminded at times of video games I'd played with similar style that were just a little off in execution when compared to their movie counterparts (Max Payne and the GTA series, especially 4). All in all though it does make for a very fun hour and a half of viewing if noir is what you're into.

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Amnesia, it's said, is very uncommon in real life and generally you retain nearly all of your memory, losing only what is most stressful of painful. It generally happens to memories more in the present tense when the person in question is under extraordinary circumstances. Forgetting one's past is extremely rare and I would guess occurs in only those with the most unbearable histories. That we see it so often in films and TV and books and other stories I think has less to do with what I just said, and is instead more a testament to usefulness as a plot device. The idea of losing one's past is intriguing and proves an often irresistible concept to storytellers. While not an overly complex piece of work, Film Noir does allow its lead character a few instances to ponder his existence over the course of the tale. "The problem with having amnesia is that you hold yourself to impossibly high standards. You're like a new-born, a child, a virgin, a clean slate inside, but on the outside you're not, you have a past, have done things, hurt people." Sometimes I wonder if noir itself, as a genre isn't uniquely suited for the element of amnesia. Its stories are often mysteries and when the central character is already in the dark about whodunnit then why give them the added challenge of losing all their memories so that they have to solve that as well? There's also the grimly illuminating idea that were a person to lose their memory they would quickly be seized upon by those willing to use them and take advantage of them -anyone who's seen Memento (another dark noir-like film with an amnesiac hero) will recognize this one. Finally there's just a sort of dreamlike quality to most noir, that comes of having a strange world that doesn't quite feel right, and characters inhabiting it who don't act normal, don't follow the rules. In the world of noir, it feels like no one can be completely believed, nothing is what it seems, and everything is open to suspicion.