A gripping tale of vengeance, and a feminist manifesto.

Rating: 10/10 (13 February 2007)

This is a film for anyone who loves great cinema or great stories. Stylized to the point that many of the scenes look, intentionally, just like comic book panels, it makes extraordinary use of a broad range of lighting and cinematography techniques. Of all the comics/graphic novels to screen adaptations, this movie succeeds in a way that sets the bar very high for everyone else. The only other comic book adaptation that comes close is Hellboy.
The acting, every bit of it, is spot-on. Jessica Alba, Jaime King, Rosario Dawson, and Carla Gugino all successfully portray mythic archetypes that are recognizable from a thousand stories and across a variety of genres.
Someone rather clueless said that this isn't a movie for feminists. (Yet another sad example of the triumph of propaganda over reality, for those lacking the wit to know one from the other, anyway.) I am a feminist, and what I loved about this movie was the way it portrayed women as strong and in control, especially in situations where they are usually depicted as helpless victims. The women in this movie use their heads. They motivate everything that happens.
The men are mostly mindless beasts or automatons, slaves to their twisted desires. The antagonists are motivated by perverse hungers, lust, and greed, which lead them to do evil things. The protagonists are motivated by a mixture of possessive paternalism and vengeance, which lead them to do horrible things, albeit to noble ends. These masochistic "heros" are also endlessly self-sacrificing, sometimes to a point that seems suicidal.
Sin City is a film about vengeance writ large, in bold, primary colors; it is a film about heroic action and senseless violence, and it is, without question, a feminist manifesto.