Wanting...

Rating: 5/10 (23 June 2006)

In a city of freaks and villains, three related stories (of revenge, redemption and love) unfold. A grizzled detective (Willis) saves the angelic child he saved long ago (now stripper Jessica Alba) from a savage killer (Stahl). A monstrous hunk of a man (Rourke) searches for the psycho who killed his lover. A rogue (Owen) takes on a corrupt cop (Del Toro). Each of these stories features elements unique to Miller's world of grotesque crime.
Robert Rodriguez - not a director known for artistry of the intelligence of his output - opts for total fidelity to his source, in terms of story and visuals. Using deft combinations of masks and green-screen, he transposes Miller's palette of stark black and white, with the occasional color. This, though technically admirable, proves to be the source of the film's downfall.
Visually, it comes across as nifty rather than great, mostly because the potential is never fully realized: a light posterization would have rendered things less jarring and more otherworldly, whereas here we have to deal with often painful to look at impossible light games. Artistically, the film comes across as irrelevant since it neither adds to Miller's world nor does it even vaguely complete with his original panels (movement, cinema's advantage over still pictures, is only once put to effective use: during a car crash.).
In terms of story, we are very much in the comic world, but while quite inventive in its own right, the story is let down by its delivery. These lines do not work in a 3D environment. And the all-too-real elements make many scenes feel odd and uncomfortable rather than part of a coherent universe. Rodriguez also unfortunately opens his film with the strongest of the three stories (Rourke's) and ends with the weakest (the Willis/Alba tale).
In terms of performance, the only thing to write home about (though with honorable mention) is the charismatic and obsessive work of Mickey Rourke. The rest of Rodriguez's impressive cast fails to register.
The main problem in Sin City might not even be in the concept or in the cast (as Rourke proves on his own), but in Rodriguez's complete submission to Miller's rules. The greatest proof is the film's only truly inventive and enjoyable scene, directed by Quentin Tarantino. Truth be told, it sticks out like a sore thumb, the only one that marks a slight departure from the comic, making full use of the cinematic medium. This gives one a taste of what a real director might have done with Miller's creation. In general the film is also surprisingly uninspired story-wise, mainly driven by a succession of pretty pointless violence that carries no purpose, no subtext, and no emotional impact since  with only one possible exception  we care not one iota about these characters.
That "Sin City" managed to reach such popularity (even, at present, having settled in the higher end of IMDb's top 100) is a tribute to the greatness of Miller's comic. That does not detract from the fact that this is a poor, pointless and infuriatingly stale film adaptation.