A brutal stew...

Rating: 5/10 (16 August 2005)

Those into graphic novels and comic-book mayhem are a ready-made audience for "Sin City", which may account for its incredibly high and generous rating. Target audiences for these kind of darkly comic bloodfests are so over-prepared to enjoy the movie they sometimes let the faults pass by unnoticed, or automatically forgiven. The narrative in "Sin City" is so shaky, and so undemanding, that the slugging, brawling, slicing violence doesn't mean much to us--there's no drive behind the plot to make us care. It's all mechanisms. Bruce Willis, as a Basin City cop with a bad ticker, tries saving a young girl from a Senator's son, a nasty, twisted child molester, but ends up shot full of holes and framed for the worm's crimes. In between his downfall and eventual release from prison, there are other stories of anti-heroes and scummy villains(the best of which features Mickey Rourke as a muscular but tender-hearted tank who is determined to find the guy who killed his lady). Yet, only Willis' portion of the picture has any soul. The production is immaculate, and the film is well-cast and shot, stylized with great skill and talent, but the sexual violence is nasty, and one is never quite sure whether to take the shootings and beatings and road rage even half-way seriously. One minute it's an R-rated cartoon, the next it's a byzantine play on old Bogart movies, with death as a reality, revenge and guilt and obsession as talismans. But, for a sadomasochistic mêlée, it certainly looks like nothing else, and that might hold attention for the non-graphic buffs.