My #1 Guilty Pleasure

Rating: 9/10 (11 September 2013)

Some movies are so deep, so subtle, you can watch them over and over, and pick up something new every time. Sin City isn't like that. Flash Gordon was my former number one guilty pleasure. When I watched it, and now, when I watch Sin City, the fun comes from seeing the same things each time: when I hear Marv tell a guy "That's a nice coat you're wearing," I know the guy's in big trouble. Although it never happens, I half expect to hear Marv tell Cardinal Roark, "That's a nice robe you're wearing."
Maybe I shouldn't call it a guilty pleasure. Siskel and Ebert both gave it thumbs up, but this movie aims at being low-brow. Usually, good drama comes from good villains. Sin City villains are all one-dimensional. They are bad, mean, nasty people. They run everything, run over everyone, and have an exaggerated sense of justification for what they do. We want them to die slow, horrible, painful deaths. As Marv puts it "I love hit men. No matter what you do to them, you don't feel bad."
While the villains do whatever they want, the heroes: Marv, Hartigan, and Dwight McCarthy are all driven by a strong sense of obligation. They can't just walk away from the situations they're in. They have to squeeze some justice and fairness out of it; at least, they have to try. Marv is the one most willing to do monstrous things, but, despite the fact that he has "a condition", he's also the one who most clearly spells out what people should or shouldn't do.
Sin City is a graphic novel put in motion. The story telling uses graphics and plenty of violence. There's violence, but it isn't gratuitously displayed. The most violent parts are masked by graphics or related to us . . . "it wasn't until I showed him all those pieces of himself. . ." In addition to masking violence, the graphics set a tone and context that straight cinematography won't give you. Right in the opening scene, the rain makes an appearance that sets a tone and tells a story.
Graphics pull us into Sin City's unreal world that has very real people in it. That's why I visit so often.