Sort of a 10 year old boys version of film noir,tedious and annoying,if undoubtedly a technical and visual triumph

Rating: Null/10 (6 June 2005)

Sin City has been called the closest a film has come to a comic book,and therein lies the problem. The two Spiderman films and Hellboy were fairly close to their sources,but they also never forgot that they were also FILMS,and that a great many people watching them will have never even looked at a comic book. As well as great action and effects they contained things like character development and at least reasonable plotting. Sin City,on the other had,just has a bunch of killers killing lots of people and falling for prostitutes. That's it. Hardly anything else. It's an extremely faithful adaptation, but it's not a good film.
The film's three stories are all set in what is like a 1940s film noir on acid. Therefore you have your tarnished heroes and your femme fatales,plus lots of hardboiled narration. These elements are blown up into almost surreal proportions. However,Sin City seems to forget that those old movies also had usually intricate plots and protagonists whose predicaments one could relate to on a basic level. The stories told in this film are all pretty much the same,involving a thuggish hero being involved with a woman,almost being killed and taking a bloody revenge. Surely the filmmakers could have chosen stories with more variety? As for the heroes or rather anti-heroes,we are never allowed to identify with or even care about them. Bruce Willis,Mickey Rourke and Clive Owen all look good,but we could be watching the Incredible Hulk in his Hulk form for all we care.
There's a monotony about the film. All the women are scantily clad and either hookers and strippers,how on earth can the female cast have found much reward in their roles? There is an incredible amount of brutality in the film, maybe the censors were kind because the film is mostly in black and white and some of the nastiest stuff is so stylized as to become almost abstract. There is definitely a place for extreme violence in films and it can be used well in many ways-for realism,for irony,to make a point,etc. I don't also believe that there is anything necessarily wrong with using violence just to shock. However,the constant bone crouching,head lopping,blood spurting action in Sin City just becomes tedious. In the first story,Mickey Rourke kills so many people that one almost feels like laughing,except that isn't particularly funny.
From a purely technical point of view Sin City is a triumph,and shows how CGI can be used very creatively indeed. The world of the film soon becomes a bore,but sometimes the CGI scapes approach the beautiful,beautiful not being a word I would normally use in relation to CGI. Sometimes they are very simple,such as the prison cell existing completely in a black void of nothing. Restraint is also shown in the use of colour. Sin City is mainly in black {and the black is often very black indeed} but sometimes a bit of colour appears briefly,often for the blood,but sometimes for more artistic purposes,such as a car journey where the inside of the car is subtly bathed in blue,green and other changing colours.
I don't like being hard on a film which was obviously made with no compromise. Too many potentially good films are weakened by studio interference,loss of courage by the director,pandering to a lower rating,etc. Director Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller {who wrote the original comic books} had a vision and refused to waver from it for a moment. They deserve some credit. Unfortunately it seems they forgot the audience.