A little too long, and not as thrilling and excellent as everyone says, but still pretty darn good

Rating: 8/10 (2 April 2005)

(MINOR SPOILERS) My first experience with Sin City was actually the sexy poster portraying Jessica Alba as Nancy, the exotic dancer. I saw the poster on sale at a horror convention, and thought "hmm that's a movie I'll probably want to see". Then when I saw commercials for it, it looked really good. I was hearing nothing but good things about the movie, which made me all the more excited. But as usual, all they hype behind this movie made my expectations soar, and the movie wasn't as mind-blowing as expected. It was still pretty good and certainly something different, but I was expecting it to be better.
Now I'm pretty sure that I am getting bashed by the reader of this comment, but let me just say that I gave this film a 7.5 out of 10, which I rounded up to an 8. The major complaint I have with the movie is that it was a bit too long; maybe an hour and 40 minutes would have been better, rather than 2 hours and 6 minutes. Some of the scenes were a little boring, but were always followed up with a cool action scene. Other than the longevity, it was a pretty good movie, and certainly original.
Sin City is like a collection of different stories, depicting certain situations of the characters. Bruce Willis is a detective who saves 11 year old Nancy Callahan from an evil child molester, played by Nick Stahl. Then the story is shifted to Marv (played to perfection by Mickey Rourke), a man with a slightly deformed face who falls in love with a hooker, only for her to be murdered while they are passed out drunk. He seeks brutal revenge on the people who murdered the only person who ever really cared about him. Next we move on to Clive Owen's character Dwight, who is now the boyfriend of bar wench Brittany Murphy. Her ex boyfriend appears to be an abusive jerk, so Dwight and his gang of hookers hunt him and his little crew down and also get their gory revenge. We then go back to Willis's character, who is finally released out of jail and fearing that now 19 year old Nancy is in danger. He finds out that she is now an exotic dancer, and is in love with him since he saved her life all those years ago. They are chased down by Nick Stahl's character, who has turned into a hideous yellow monstrosity, thanks to some bad medicine he had to take.
Overall this was a pretty good movie. All the acting was great, especially Mickey Rourke's character. Elijah Wood's Kevin character never speaks, and is just downright creepy. Jessica Alba is certainly sexy as exotic flashdancer (if you will) Nancy Callahan, and Brittany Murphy was actually pretty good herself. The movie is loaded with violence, but since the majority of the film is black and white, the blood is bright white and is not really that gross. There really isn't as much nudity as everyone is saying, just a few short topless scenes and that's about it. This was definitely a good comic book movie, and reminded me of Kill Bill in a way. I recommend this movie, but not if you have a weak stomach.