Like nothing you've ever seen (unless you've read the comic)

Rating: 9/10 (3 April 2005)

Despite "The Matrix", it took almost 11 years for a movie to give audiences the feeling they got when they first saw "Pulp Fiction". And like "Pulp Fiction" and "The Matrix", "Sin City" is like nothing you've ever seen on screen before. It's the birth of a new genre of movies.
It's absolutely Robert Rodriguez best movie (many people I know hate his movies, but I enjoyed "El Mariachi", "From Dusk Til Dawn" and even in a minor note the first two "Spy Kids" movies), and it possibly will be the zenith of his career.
The movie owns all these qualities to Frank Miller's comic series. The source of this movie is one of the most visually astonishing, cinematic works ever put on print. The fact that the movie is a carbon copy of the comic books it's both a point in its favor and a problem.
Yes, "Sin City" is not perfect.
I believe the movie would have benefited of a slower pace. That would have made the movie too long, but then, Rodriguez and Miller would have used a trick from the Peter Jackson School of Novel Adaptations and cut some scenes from the theatrical version and add it in a DVD for fans. Making the movie a carbon copy of the book also restricted the potential of the film medium. They could have done some scenes not featured in the comic book to connect the stories better. In all, the could have avoided the problem with the "Harry Potter" movies, which are a bit boring because the book to film transition was too literal.
"Sin City" is not for everyone. Many people will cringe to the sometimes gratuitous ultra- violent scenes. It works in comics, but on screen may be too much. "Road to Perdition" was a movie that toned down the action and violence of its comic book source because of the same reasons.
I actually cringed at something different: Elijah Wood and Clive Owen, playing the most agile characters of the movie, display their Chuck Taylors as if they were in a commercial. This was really distracting. It happens than even in a world like nothing you've ever seen, you can't avoid some things of this world.