Lost in translation...

Rating: 2/10 (24 May 2010)

SIN CITY (unfortunately) points up one of the major flaws with most comic books: while the writing may seem new and dynamic to regular readers of comic books (who- trust me- put up with unbelievably bad writing), it simply doesn't hold up when fleshed out. (HELLBOY is another case in point: purty pitchers, but an unvarying storyline that always ends with Mr. Boy pounding his supernatcherl adversaries into dust. Creator Mike Mignola has recently taken to lifting ideas from the late Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John the Baladeer stories and, most recent of all, "borrowing" a storyline from the teleseries ANGEL. None of it makes HELLBOY any more readable, or the movies worth watching.) Frank Miller, mistaken for God by many of the aforementioned famished fanboys because he took that bastion of Law and Order, Batman, and tried to make him out to be some kind of Outsider (when, in fact, Batman is "by the book" to the core), did a decent enough job with SIN CITY (the comic versions), but the whole thing falls flat on the Big Screen. The reason is all too obvious: the writing. Visually on a par with most video games, it just doesn't hold up where it needs it most.