Show, don't tell

Rating: 2/10 (15 August 2005)

In comics, the overuse of exposition enables the static images to gain a kind of movement that wouldn't otherwise have, adding a kind of life to them. We don't read the words out loud - they would sound ridiculous - but instead internalize them as we read them, creating a delusion of action. Try it; read your favorite comics out loud, listening to how the words play and flow - it's awful. But that's a function of the additional role that exposition has to serve in a motionless book as much as the juvenile nature of most of them. Yet in Sin City, we actually hear that, and it goes from stylized to moronic to hysterical to pathetic in only a few scenes - it's the wrong tool for the wrong job, and the actual inherent quality of it is therefore irrelevant.
Sin City proves this with a vengeance. As a result, the dialog becomes absolutely wince-inducing, sounding like something a 12-year-old boy would write as he dreamed of tough guys and sexy girls. Nuance, subtlety, even innuendo are completely absent - that's thinking stuff, not action and thrills! It's like taking film noir, eliminating the "boring parts" (that is, boring to the child in us), ramping up the action to Bugs Bunny levels, and, well... waiting for nothing to happen.
Comic readers like to convince themselves the medium is actually mature and intelligent, rather than the pre-teen fantasies of adequacy their detractors claim. What is remarkable about Sin City is both sides come about absolutely convinced their case has been proved beyond question. As someone who feels the direct translation of a comic to a film is utterly misguided, I have to side with on the latter.