Interesting film style and great cast, but other than that, there isn't much else working for it.

Rating: 2/10 (2 April 2005)

I saw Sin City opening day, all hyped up by the previews and "making-ofs" that I had seen. I have to be honest. I'm a movie-buff kind of guy. I've seen all sorts of films from Hollywood to foreign to cult favorites, and Sin City is at the top of the list for violence. If this film hadn't been in black and white, I'm not sure I would have been able to stomach it. The movie opened well, with Josh Hartnett putting in a nice appearance, but it was all downhill from there. I admit, I was worried that the style would kill the movie for me. Often times this sort of thing is over-done, but that wasn't the case. In fact, the film style was almost all that was really working for the movie in my mind. The black and white with random color gave the movie a unique and offbeat film-noir sort of feel (which was the intention here,) and admittedly. Not only that, but it spared the audience (as best it could) from the violence of this movie. I've read the comic books, so I'll be fair. I'm not a huge fan of the Sin City story lines to begin with, although I found them intriguing and interesting. However, the movie takes the violence in the comic books to a whole other level. This movie has it all. Nearly any kind of violence you can imagine, it's here, in this movie. The cast was superb. Jessica Alba broke out of her Hollywood "Honey" stereotype and gave a good performance in this movie. Bruce Willis performed well, as did really everyone else in the film. The script, however, tried a little TOO hard to sound "film-noir-ish." There's hardly any emotional involvement between the characters, and the motives for these people to do what they did is shaky at best. This, however, is something I can overlook. I am, after all, watching a movie based on a comic book. Between the script, the divided up story lines, and the truly vomit-inducing violence, however, I can't bring myself to like this movie. I wanted to, I really did, and if you're one of those people who aren't susceptible to any level of violence (as I thought myself before this movie,) give it a try and see what you think. It certainly is an interesting venture in movie-making, but to me, this movie was mediocre at best, and relied much more on a gimicky style and comic-book fan base than a good script and intellectual plot line.