Sinful, But in an Awesome Way

Rating: 10/10 (9 January 2008)

Okay, let's just get it out of the way: Sin City is not a movie of substance, it is a movie of style. There is an obvious difference, and both are usually required on some level, but every once in a while one can replace the other. There is no point to this movie other than to be as bad ass as possible. It has a chauvinistic attitude towards women, the violence is reprehensible, and the language ain't too far behind. So basically, I love it. There is a certain poetry to the stories presented, a sort of cadence to the characters' words and actions. Take this dialogue, for instance, uttered at an even tone, not shouted or even indicating any real emotion:
"I'm Shellie's new boyfriend and I'm out of my mind. If you so much as talk to her or even think her name, I'll cut you in ways that'll make you useless to a woman."
It's gritty and tough, like what the disfigured son of sandpaper and bronze would say if it had but lips to part. It is an extreme version of what anyone imagines themselves saying in an action picture scenario. There's loads more, look:
"This is blood for blood and by the gallon. These are the old days, the bad days, the all-or-nothing days. They're back! There's no choice left. And I'm ready for war."
"It's time to prove to your friends that you're worth a damn. Sometimes that means dying, sometimes it means killing a whole lot of people."
"I'm on my feet for about ten minutes before the cops kick them out from under me. They don't ask me any questions. They just keep knocking the crap out of me and waving a confession in my face. And I keep spitting blood all over it and laughing at how many fresh copies they come up with. Then along comes this worm assistant district attorney who turns the recorder off and says if I don't sign their confession, they'll kill my mom. I break his arm in three places and I sign it."
Poetry! I don't know if there's anyone who can get a thug's inner thoughts down on paper as well as Frank Miller can. If you don't know, this was based on a series of comic books by Miller, and when I say "based on" I mean modeled directly after. What Gus Van Sant did with Psycho, Robert Rodriguez has done with Sin City. Nearly shot for shot and word for word, this IS the comic book on-screen. Shot in black, white, red, and the occasional splotch of yellow, it perfectly captures the feel of the comic in motion. This was one of the pioneering "green screen movies" like 300 and Sky Captain, so the post-production crew had almost unlimited ability to play with the footage and create the living graphic novel. What for, you ask? I say, why not?!?
So, fine, people can say it doesn't mean anything. That's okay. Not all movies have to have some sort of agenda it is trying to steer its audience towards. Sin City is good for that other reason movies exist - to entertain. It's an amusing, cartoonishly violent, hardcore film noir that only exists to be an example of pure genre. I do not believe it was meant to be taken seriously and at face value, nor do I think it's possible to do so anyway. To anyone who complains of its violence, sexism, and lack of pure, gentile characters, I say go take your pill and come back when you want to have a little fun. Buncha nambie-pambies...
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