Film Noir Re-Invented in a Dazzling Fictional World

Rating: Null/10 (4 April 2005)

"Sin City" is a sizzling tribute to the impact of 1930's noir fiction on popular culture imagery.
So it was amusing that my husband and I were more than twice the age of the other audience members and we were enjoying laughing out loud to the satirical references that none of them seemed to get.
I hope all the attention to the violence won't keep away other people who are old enough to remember the roots of graphic novels in the hard-boiled detective in a corrupt city book and movie genre, as the film is actually much less gory than "Kill Bill" and such action films as "Assault on Precinct 13" and has a lot in common with "L.A. Confidential." While the crimes that are described or committed are macabrely heinous, descending from the progenitor noir "M," we actually don't see them directly, as the camera either pulls away or we see them in silhouette or after. So it is the power of your imagination that turns your stomach.
Imagination is set free in a highly stylized, mostly black and white universe beget by "Metropolis" and much more effectively realized here than any of the "Batman" movies, as color, particularly blood red, only appears for emphasis.
As the intersecting stories flash back and forward, we also find that some of the characters actually survive their tortures, albeit transformed physically or psychologically.
Most of the actors fit into the hyper-reality of this fictional world, particularly Bruce Willis, a sinuous Jessica Alba and virtually unrecognizable Mickey Rourke and Benicio Del Toro. The planes of Clive Owen's and Rosario Dawson's faces look great but they are having so much fun playing atypical roles that they can't keep the requisite straight faces and don't generate the necessary chemistry. Owen's Brit accent slips in occasionally (I was wondering if like Hugh Laurie's qualms in "House, M.D." that those sentences had a lot of R's in them) while Dawson does have to wear what must be the most uncomfortable thongs and stiletto heels.
The women's position in this society and therefore in the film is of course problematical. While the only opportunities for women are as scantily clad bar maids, entertainers or prostitutes, we're supposed to respect that they have brokered empowerment among the powers that be to run their own businesses that capitalize on men's baser needs, as well as having an overly stereotyped mysterious Asian assassin as one of their own.
The women are the fulcrum of the film as their exaggerated knights errant are obsessed to the death with defending them and their hard fought position in exchange for even a little artless affection from them, which raises the view of women here a smidgen above teen boys' comic book fantasies. I haven't yet looked at Frank Miller's source material to know if Alexis Bledel's character originally does call her mom a lot or if that was added for an additional pop culture reference layer to "Gilmore Girls," as the dialog and the images are full of such touchstones.
The music is terrifically propulsive in adding to the momentum.
But that is just one of the many components that multitasking Robert Rodriguez has taken care of himself to create as enveloping and more exciting a visual environment than the "The Matrix" movies.