Now and again Hollywood hits home with something really great

Rating: 9/10 (4 August 2012)

As comic book adaptions go, you just don't get any better than this. Sin City does a rare thing where it scores equally highly as a piece of innovative visual art as it does as entertainment. Much of the success must surely be put down to Robert Rodriguez working alongside Frank Miller the creator of the comic. With Miller on board it meant that the movie was unlikely to end up being watered down and safe. In actual fact Sin City is a fairly uncompromising movie as far as comic-book adaptions go. It's full of sadism, sexuality and perversion. This is in keeping with the original comic which was based in a place full of corruption, sleaze and violence.
The narrative is made up of several inter-connected crime stories, á la Pulp Fiction (in fact Quentin Tarantino directed the scene where Dwight and Jackie Boy talk in a car). Much of the information is given via voice-overs that detail the central character's inner thoughts. All of this comes direct from the original comic's pages which adds further to the faithfulness of the adaption. But over and above everything Sin City is a film of amazing visuals. Alternatively beautiful and grotesque, the look of the film is always highly inventive and experimental. The choice of doing the film in black and white with selective colour was a very bold one. But it's a decision that paid off massively.
The cast is outstanding. Amongst others, Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson, Benico Del Toro, Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Elijah Wood, Nick Stahl and Rutger Hauer star in a selection of very memorable roles. Rourke, Owen and Willis are the three central characters and all are very solid. Wood and Stahl are both seriously creepy as respectively a serial killer and a hideous paedophile. While Rosario Dawson and Jessica Alba simply melt the screen such is their sheer sex appeal. In general, Sin City is considerably sexier than most Hollywood movies. Its sensuality is in fact one of its main strengths.
Violent, sexy and cinematically inventive. That's Sin City. A real triumph.