Watching this film because of John Lennon's endorsement and a short synopsis I had read, I found myself very upset about what I saw and disappointed with the story as a whole (particularly the second half = the acting and plot went downhill very quickly). While the visuals, for the most part, are amazing and hauntingly desolate/strange...the film quickly became an unsettling, pretentious mess. First, the entire film is a biblical allusion (Old and New Testament), which would be great...BUT Jodorowsky's religious references are so blatant and redundant that they become annoying, tired and expected (like moral ground in a Disney cartoon geared toward a six year old). Secondly, there are hundreds of dead mutilated, mostly real animals throughout the entire film making it one to watch on an empty stomach (I actually do biomedical research using rats, which I have to dissect biweekly for brain and spinal tissue, and the animal carnage still gave me a foul taste in my mouth). Thirdly, the physics don't make any sense at all (a certain thrown knife that impossibly kills a baddie...as well as other incidences that make you say "what...but how???". Finally, what makes me most ashamed for watching this film, is the gratuitous, undignified and disrespectfully dark humor use of actual maimed and deformed (by birth defects) people throughout the entire film. A perfect example of this is a part where a man with no arms reaches for a gun in his holster.
So before you buy...I strongly recommended renting it. And if you really want a slick, surrealist gunfight film, try Branded To Kill by Seijun Suzuki (so strangely wonderful, he was fired for making it).