Sin City

Rating: 5/10 (21 August 2009)

When Frank Miller started doing Sin City the comic, he was already past his prime. Gone was the political paranoia in favour of big drama. His comic work was always what you'd call cinematic, anyhow, so no surprises that they turned this to a movie. The problem is that what you'd see in the comic and think it was OK, say, a comic rendition of a slow motion scene culminating in a big one-page drawing, in the movie it works the opposite way: it exposes it for the cinematic cliché that it is. Essentially this is a quasi-cartoon tribute to film noir, too reliant on dramatic bombast. Frank Miller should take a look back to his roots (Ronin, Elektra Assassin, The Dark Knight Returns) in case he rediscovers what it was that made him special in the comic universe.