Blood, Babes, and Base Brutality in Basin City

Rating: 1/10 (2 April 2005)

"Sin City" has great, breakthrough CGI green-screen visuals, some of the best ever committed to film. Those visuals are art-directed (read: borrowed) from many of the highly visual art styles seen in Japanese "manga" (comics), as were were Miller's original graphic stories. Even so, the film's visuals are striking--you won't soon forget the "look" of this film.
But "Sin City" is extremely gory throughout, with way over the top bloodletting and unpleasant, savagely violent and supposedly "funny" dialog/scenes--with lots of attractive T & A in tow. (A decidedly _non-erotic_ mix if you ask me, this blending of ultra violence, savage humor, and sexual imagery.) These juvenile obsessions are repeated over and over and make for a script that is pretty unbelievable, even in a film that purports to be in the style of Film Noir. In fact, the script _mocks_ the voice-over style of Film Noir and its clipped, cadenced dialog, piling it on and on to the point of absurdity and silliness.
So while I admire "Sin City's" stunning visuals, I was turned off by the level of psychic violence in the film, with its underlying glorification of--and exploitation of--extremely brutal violence, as portrayed in almost every grue-drenched scene of the film.
While talking about violent cinema, let me point out that "Sin City" sure ain't no "Kill Bill, Vol. 1 & 2," films that are so much better and more artfully done--on all levels.