One of the Best

Rating: 9/10 (17 April 2005)

Beyond simply being a movie, this film was a sensory experience. Every element of the picture was refined with artistic styling usually reserved for those foreign-speaky-artsy garbage-can movies that you only ever see if your tax bracket is higher than your I.Q. bracket or you are pursuing a PhD Ostentatious Culturalism. Instead of cheesy, brainiac culture food, this film delivers a gritty, thought provoking action drama that will stick with you long after the credits roll.
While I am strongly opposed to the modern concept of the anti-hero, a person who does bad things for a good or noble purpose, Sin City pulls its characters together with a remarkably realistic feel, amidst a sharply unrealistic (stylistic?) setting. Unlike other anti-heroes I have seen portrayed in movies like Enough and Gigli, these characters seem to lack any pretense of decency. They are flawed people doing the wrong thing in a world that is corrupt beyond imagination. Even the noblest character amongst them, Hartigan (Bruce Willis), would admit impure motives.
The level of violence in the film is a bit too high for my usual tastes, but the way it is filmed an expressed makes it tolerable. Most of the characters seem to have some kind of supernatural fortitude that, while not always saving their lives, makes the quantity and quality of the violence that can be perpetrated on their persons a morbid spectacle to behold. However, while violent imagery propels, the film, there is a sharp mind behind the wheel that steers it clear from being another bashable movie like House of a Thousand Corpses.
Sin City is funny, sexy, suspenseful, shocking and intelligent (without being too high-brow). You simply must watch this movie.