Review of Black Lagoon

In Black Lagoon you'll see glimmers of Tarantino, the Coens, Leone, Woo and Peckinpah, but instead of fetishizing gunplay with slow-motion “ballet” (ugh, what a metaphor), slide kills and post-modern self-awareness, the show looks to Neitzsche, Heidegger and Sartre for meaning in its violence. In short, it's a different beast. Black Lagoon posits a shadow world of unrestrained vice, where violence is not just essential for survival, but essential for being. (Dig that title--it's the abyss staring back at us.) Like Fight Club, Black Lagoon finds existential meaning in violence, and it finds that meaning with great frequency and greatpower. One never feels pity, sympathy or hollow righteousness in the characters' actions, because there's a necessity to them; it's an oddly liberating feeling not to have to judge homicidal maniacs too harshly. The characters have created their own morality, and we're just visiting. It's a perspective that lends Black Lagoon its unique dramatic power, and it's what makes it a heady action experience unlike any other.