We used to complain about Hollywood travesties of great books; now we're reduced to kvetching about movies that cheapen the comic strips on which they're based. Compared to this brash, lunkheaded vehicle for Baywatch star Pamela Anderson Lee, the Barb Wire graphic novels are masterpieces of subtlety and narrative restraint. Still, BARB WIRE delivers the action goods and squeezes its pneumatic star into appropriately tasteless sheathes of leather and latex. Ms. Lee simpers and snarls adequately as the title character, a tough-as-nails saloonkeeper who joins forces with freedom-loving rebels in a dystopian near future. All in all, we can think of worse role models for girls -- e.g., the heroines of I SHOT ANDY WARHOL and BUTTERFLY KISS.