outstanding movie

Rating: Null/10 (13 April 2005)

Sin City was almost all I could have hoped for.
They had to tone down some things to get the R rather than the dreaded NC-17... and at a guess a lot of the actresses have "no full nudity" clauses in their contracts (ie: I am certain of this for Jessica Alba)... but overall they maintained the integrity of the bleak and gritty tone of the books... and the visuals were dead on the money.
It was almost perfectly as if the graphics had come to life. It is pure art. Unlike Sky Captain, which bored me to tears in spite of its visual perfection, this movie also has serious plot substance, which illustrates some very human and even philosophical truths.
My only real complaint was the deadpan lack of affect the actors adopted for the voice-over narratives. I had always read the "internal dialogs" as having more emotive loading than was to be heard in the delivery in the movie. This was slightly annoying to me, though I recognize the resonance with old detective film-noir they were establishing.
As I have been a fan of Sin City since its first appearance in DHP lo these dozen or more years ago, I cannot even begin to imagine how one who has never read the books would react to the movie. I knew 100% of the plot and over 90% of the dialog before the first frame hit the screen, so I was not surprised or shocked by anything in the movie, and saw nothing I had not long anticipated. I knew the punchlines to all the jokes, knew the answers to all the riddles, and had long been immersed in the gestalt of the world Miller had created. I cannot say how a n00b would take the visual style, the extreme violence, the gallows-humor, or the bleak plots.
The thing to understand, if you are wavering about seeing this movie, is that the violence is NOT gratuitous. It is essential. Allow me to explain...
The stories of Sin City are all about REDEMPTION.
The protagonists are all "bad" people. Stained people. People who have made big mistakes, bad choices in horrid situations, people who were screwed at birth and getting by as best they can with what they have. Savages, fornicators, strippers, brawlers born in the wrong era, those who love too strongly and hate too deeply. People with little to lose but their last remaining shreds of integrity, people who stick by their friends because most of the world has ever been inimical to them. People who stand up for themselves, because NO ONE will stand up for them. People who do not flinch when the chips are down and hard nastiness is the order of the day. Such people as stop at nothing to do right by their small circle of friends.
The antagonists, on the other hand, are all EVIL. Very realistically evil: corrupt, venal, gluttonous, perverse as only civilized sophisticates can be... Those who delight in inflicting pain and death not as a means but as an end in itself. Those who seek to rule others, who are offended that anything exists without their permission, who spend others' lives like a rich man spends dollars. Those who hide their evil in plain sight - dressed in the gaudy robes of false piety and social standing.
The conflict between such groups as these cannot but be horrifically violent.