How do you spell overrated?

Rating: 3/10 (27 January 2006)

Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino are no doubt thanking their lucky stars that there is a new generation born every day that has no memory of what went on before their birth. I say this because I read comments to the effect that this is the most violent mainstream film ever or such rot. Calling Sin City violent is like calling an Archie comic strip erotic. Nonetheless, this would not be a problem if the film did not have such a hype train following it, telling all and sundry how cooooooooool it is. What Sin City is, well, I describe it as being forty-five million dollars worth of digital imagery in search of a plot or an enjoyable cast. For around two hours, one spends the entire time watching distracting scenery pass by as actors recite lines they clearly are uncomfortable with and act in nigh on total darkness. Half the time, actors cannot be made out because of how dim the images are. One could be forgiven for thinking that Mickey Rourke's makeup was a dog dropping face mask.
If there is a saving grace to the film, it is Jessica Alba's portrayal of the nineteen year old Nancy. She gives the character a human edge that the entire rest of the film utterly lacks. She still has too much of a tendency to speak like a Californian stoner when it is inappropriate, but in the absence of a human quality in any other part of the film, I will take whatever I can get. Bruce Willis also manages to make a decent fist of his role, but the almost complete surrounding in green panels makes it difficult for him to react. Actors will tell you that the eyes are one of the most vital acting tools, but so too is the sheer ease of having something to react to. In their scenes together, Willis and Alba really give the impression of a pair who met when one of the inviduals was a mere eleven years old. Unlike the rest of the film, Willis and Alba manage to build an emotional investment in their scenes. One constantly hopes that things will work out for this mismatched pair, even though the rest of the film makes it clear that things working out is not an option.
Unfortunately, it is the selling point of the film that becomes its undoing. Professed by some to be an overly violent film, Sin City only demonstrates how much more squeamish cinema and audiences have become since the late 1980s. Much like Death Race 2000, none of the ensuing violence in Sin City looks real. Making it worse is that characters are repeatedly shot, blown up, or jump through panes of glass without suffering any of the injuries one expects from these events. After watching the end of Ransom or a true ultra-violent piece like RoboCop, Sin City comes across more like a no-consequence piece like Narnia than any sort of brutality. The almost-monochrome photography helps matters little, forcing the eyes to strain whenever the luminance does not quite jibe. Scenes in which Elijah Wood's glasses shine into the camera are particularly annoying in this regard, becoming bright enough to cause headaches in the photo-hypersensitive. Are Hollywood directors really so out of story ideas that they have to make their films unique by excluding nonstandard individuals?
Actually, the idea this film has that lots of fake blood and gore is any substitute for consequence when depicting violence is not so surprising. One of its helmsmen was involved with the second and third RoboCop films, if that tells you anything. Quentin Tarantino is a moron who thinks that individuals talking about how hardcore they are is any substitute for individuals showing the audience how hardcore they are. Robert Rodriguez gives it his best shot, but the man has not directed a decent film since Desperado. It seems the amount of cash one allocates to his films and his ability to make something out of it are inversely proportional to one another. Sure, he can do a lot of easy tricks and timesavers with his digital camera, but the story or sense of adventure seem to fall by the wayside. Add these three together, and you have a problem. There is an old saying that too many cooks spoil a broth, and three directors is certainly my idea of too many. One can almost tell who directed which segment by taking careful note of the clashing visions. While Frank Miller's vision of his own comic book won out for the most part, having an author adapt his own work is not always a good thing (Maximum Overdrive, anyone?).
I gave Sin City a three out of ten. It is not bad enough to be good, but it is better than the mediocre garbage I normally give a two. Aside from its tedious subject matter and artificial dialogue, there are some legitimately effective shots in the film. Elijah Wood puts on a nothing-face like no other, convincing me the boy might have some talent after all. So I guess you can say that the film did in fact achieve something.