A Glorious Film-Noir Nightmare Come to Life

Rating: 10/10 (3 April 2005)

Mixing good old-fashioned hard boiled crime movie clichÃ©s with modern day violence and special effects, "Frank Miller's Sin City" explodes onto the screen with all the shock and awe that it's graphic novel source material promised. This movie is a monster: a film-noir classic on steroids raised on B-Movies. It exploits the darkest of the dark, and entertains us with it. It touches all the hungry emotions and acknowledges all the base desires we expect and want from such films. Heck, it is perhaps the ultimate example of such films, and therefore takes its place as a new classic. It is beautiful to look at, bold in its style, comic in its outlandishness, and totally audacious in its violence. The film's aesthetics range from "Double Indemnity" to "Kill Bill" (with thousands more in-between), and it takes the audience to an intoxicating and dangerous new place that feels strangely familiar: Welcome to Sin City.