awesome piece of art

Rating: 9/10 (3 April 2005)

In an age where Grand Theft Auto and other violent video games and forms of entertainment are accused of corrupting this nation's youth, "Sin City" explodes into theaters as a movie so violent and visually explicit that it will make Pulp Fiction look like a toned-down episode of the Tellitubies.
I would say with confidence that there are more than twenty graphic be-headings and amputations during the course of this film. Swords are driven through peoples eyes and arms and genitalia are constantly amputated throughout the film. The black and white style of the film is actually probably necessary to make the gratuitous violence at least non-vomit inducing. There are few violent lines that this movie does not cross and no pop-culture no-fly zones that it does not experiment with. A priest is executed in a confessional booth. Nuff said.
The violence being touched upon, I would not say this is a bad movie, or even a so-so movie. This movie excels with the style with which it portrays the graphic and undeniably real subject of Frank Miller's ancient comic books sharing the same name. It is humorous to think of these stories of never-ending violence and sex being sold as the same genre as Superman and Batman comics decades ago. The black an white movie in this modern age is a risk, but it pays off as the color splashes that director Robert Rodriguez throws onto characters at certain points of the movie stylistically characterize the people of Sin City in a way that the vacuous script fails to accomplish. The yellow of serial pedophile and rapist Junior makes the disgusting aura of his character leap off the screen. It becomes almost difficult to view his horribly altered body without flinching. A positive use of color is used with the subtle tan allowed for Jessica Alba's (Nancy) skin. This tan makes Alba look more irresistible than in any other movie she has appeared in because it literally gives here the appearance of being an angel among humans.
The only problem with this movie revolves around the aforementioned vacuous script. Rodriguez allows for extremely long internal voice-over monologues from his heroes to give them appropriate humanity along with visual grit. Now in comic books like the one from which this movie was derived, the dialogue is usually about fifty percent thought bubbles to allow for characterization from otherwise un-personalized archetypes. Rodriguez does what the X-Men and Batman movies avoided doing by placing that huge amount of internal speech in the movie as voice-overs. He makes the script of this movie sound like the reading of an actual comic book, not just a script based on characters and ideas from a comic book. This movie is not based on a comic book but is actually a faithful, life-action representation of a comic book and that in itself should garner Rodriguez credit as a courageous filmmaker because it is an extremely daring thing to attempt. It is not unsuccessful, but there are some problems with such a script. For one, it will turn off fans of traditional movie scripts who have never enjoyed comic books. Furthermore, the voice-overs are occasionally awkwardly worded and provide little person to person acting that modern audiences expect. True, Clive Owen, Bruce Willis, and Mickey Rourke are all in this movie, but don't expect a scene of intense person acting between an enraged Owen and a quiescent Willis. This movie is not about the development of these characters, they are merely the vessels allowing for the creation of a twisted and corrupt Orwellian otherworld, a physical canvas for Rodriguez to play with style upon.
While there were many inventive things bout this movie, there were some aspects that got extremely tired by the end of the movie. When someone is shot 100 times in the chest, do not assume they are dead. I would say that almost every character in this movie appears dead but then is magically resurrected by either the powers of fortune or just simply super-human vitality. I mean, it gets ridiculous when Benecio Del Toro's Jackie Boy continues speaking for about thirty minutes of the movie after he has been brutally beheaded and turned into a pez dispenser of vital fluids. It must be something in the water because every character in Sin City can seemingly jump off of incredibly tall buildings and land on cement without any pain. It is humorous that Willis' character Hartigan checks to see if Junior is dead after being shot directly in the neck. Its only funny because we know that he is not dead even though Willis' finds no pulse. His later appearance is practically expected by that point, even though its supposed to be surprising.
The plots are not very interesting. There are twists and more twists, but the gist of the plot is always the brutal execution of one person or the other. By the time all three sub-stories end, supposed heroes Willis, Rourke, and Owen have killed at least 100 people combined. Rodriguez blends the three stories nicely with coincidences and time and characters linking the stories into a web of chaos. By the end of the movie, you feel like you have been on a whirlwind of violence and scantily clad women. It is a perfect movie for guys in their twenties who lie comics, but I can safely say that outside of that demographic few would stomach this film or at the very least venture to call it an enjoyable experience. For the most part, the movie is trivial and needlessly violent, but always interesting and always (because of Rodriguez's one of a kind style) fun to look at, so I would certainly suggest it for the curious moviegoer. Its probably safer to watch Finding Neverland, but if your in the mood for something wild and out of the ordinary, "Sin City" is guaranteed to hit the spot.