We've All Seen It, We've Oo'd, We've Aah'd, But Does It Hold Its Own With The Company It's In?

Rating: 6/10 (23 July 2007)

Everyone loves Sin City because not only is it an epic of blood-drenched action and sick, twisted violence and subject matter, but also filmed in black and white with specifically chosen and very richly realized colors and boasting both a cast riddled with names and faces we all love but the two directors that have delivered more on the super-cool blood-and-guts pulp entertainment level this generation than any other director. Well, as someone who has followed the careers of both directors, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, for nearly all of my life, I will say that I'm not impressed with Sin City at all. It is entertaining on the most basic level: It's sort of fun to watch when you're in a hotel and you're waiting for the other people you're with to wake up and it happens to be on TV. That's how much of an impact Sin City really has.
Let's take the cinematography Rodriguez is applauded for so, with the black and white sprinkled with color placements. Steven Spielberg did the exact same thing with Schindler's List, which was filmed entirely in black and white and had a single scene wherein there was one girl in a jittering crowd of many whose dress was chosen to be pink. This meant something as well. I'm not saying that Sin City should be compared to a film like Schindler's List, because Sin City is all about style, and that's fine. Many of our greatest entertainments are only exercises in style. But Schindler's List actually filmed. Sin City was shot with a regular camera on Rodriguez's little pet blue screen and fed through a machine so the black and white with the colors can all be added later. The difference is so loud and clear I'm almost deaf. Can no one see how campy Sin City really looks? It really looks goofy sometimes. Take the image where Mickey Rourke is swimming from the duct under the river as an example. The majority of the film really does not look so cool.
I understand that Rodriguez's intention was to create an exact cinematic replica of Frank Miller's original graphic novels. Well, that's fine. But why not make it a cool-looking cinematic replica? Rodriguez needs to learn to make movies like a real filmmaker makes movies. Real filmmakers know how to take risks by spending a little money, going to a real set, driving a real car, squibbing things instead of adding bullet holes later. Filmmakers are not little computer geeks having fun in their technologically converted garage in Austin, Texas. They're bold people who want to capture something intense or powerful, something personal that they imagine. Not some fluffy image anybody with that computer program could churn out. There is no talent in what he does. I am tired of him.
The voice-overs delivered by the film noir caricatures that populate this movie are like the fragmented, raspy-voiced, overzealous voice-overs during movie trailers. Also, they go way too far explaining what characters are thinking. If we're watching the movie, we should be able to figure certain things out without being baby-stepped through it. It truly gets aggravating to hear Bruce Willis's voice narrating himself through getting up off the floor. Just get up off the floor. And some of these characters speak like grungy Dashiell Hammett types from New York or L.A., and some sound like Midwestern or Southern high school drop-outs with really bad grammar, and some speak in dialect that can only be found in its purest form in superhero comic books. What region is this Sin City in?! Or Basin City, as it is called in the film.
Like I said, the film is very basically fun to watch. You stop over at your friend's house, and he and some other dope are watching Sin City, so you sit down and finish it with them, because that's exactly what you came over to do: Hang out. So let me tell you the good points of this film: Benicio Del Toro and Clive Owen, both very natural and very becoming in their roles, and also the perfect hero-and-villain match-up. Rosario Dawson, in quite a change of pace, is the highlight of the very conveniently male-pleasing female portion of the movie. Another good touch is Josh Hartnett's performance. In fact, I think his very small role, which is given zero backstory and the slightest indications, is perhaps the most clever of the entire ensemble.
Tarantino's little guest director scene is an interesting little bit but not at all distinguishable from the rest of the movie. Really, if you know the scoop, you know that Rodriguez invited Tarantino as a guest director so that he could try to prove to him that blue-screen and CGI film-making techniques are better than hands-on techniques. Notice that Tarantino did not convert.