Not bad.

Rating: 6/10 (14 July 2005)

First off, I wholeheartedly agree with the critics on here who have suggested that passing off three totally unrelated short stories as a single feature length film is misleading. It wouldn't matter if the three linked up in any meaningful way, but they don't. As far as I can see, the principal male stars are all in the lap dancing club at one point. And that's it. The sad fact is that only one of the three stories is good, which is that of Marv (Rourke). This story is utterly fantastic, well shot, well told, and well paced, although the moralistics of the tale don't really stand up to much scrutiny. Certain sections of the dialogue is utterly contemptible, but for some reason they don't jar so much when the hero is so utterly likable as Marv. From the very beginning, although Marv does some pretty heinous things, we empathise and like his character far more than the other two male leads in 'Sin City', despite the fact (or probably because of the fact) that he's a monster. For some reason the utterly over the top violence that Marv commits seem to be an inescapable aspect of his character, part of his feral, barely controlled personality. This is not an excuse to explain away the excessive violence in the film, but it seems to fit in with the dynamics of this story far more than it does in the other two, where it just seems inserted for the sake of it. Marv is certainly the character with the most depth in the film, built up as he is of contrasts and contradictions. This aids the telling of this part of the story immensely.
I'm not going to devote much space to discussing the other two strands, because they genuinely aren't really worth devoting much attention to. Rourke is a much better gravel and whisky voiced narrator than the other two, who really do just sound a little bit pussy, like little boys trying to talk like men. Willis' story is slightly better than the utterly puerile, misogynistic and poorly paced / plotted other story, which I would guess is justified as empowering to women, which is another way of saying we put them in sexy outfits and let them kill lots of stupid men. Because we 'respect' them ( *hollow laughter* ), this justifies us portraying them as sex objects. And the speeches where Dwight continually refers to Gina as his Valkyrie are so completely and totally corny and pathetic that it is actually insulting to the intelligence of the viewer. Furthermore, the Irish characters in this story are just feel like last minute insertions, hollowly characterised and stereotypical bad guys to put in there because all the other ones are dead and they needed to stretch the story out for another fifteen minutes by providing cannon fodder for our intrepid hero.
I'm not familiar with Miller's work and as such am spared having to compare the film version to the comic, which seems to be a bone of contention with many people on here. For what it's worth though, I thought that the film looked utterly fantastic for the most part, although occasionally the darkness of the surroundings was an impediment. Stylistically, I also really liked the flashes of color, although they were usually on things totally unrelated to plot development, what there was of it.
Sin City, on the whole is a classic example of testosterone fuelled style over substance, which relies far too much on conventions handed down from films like Pulp-Fiction to have much merit in it's own right. However, for me the film is redeemed by a top notch performance from Rourke, and it's awesome visuals. Not bad, could have been better.