Sin City - sorry, guys...

Rating: 6/10 (30 September 2005)

Just saw this for the first time and, oh boy I wanted to enjoy it. But while I appreciate that I am probably in a sulky minority of one, I'll admit to being a little disappointed. Praise has been heaped on the film by fans who see it as one of most successful realisations to date of comic book to big screen, and the stylisation was striking which one imagines is, alongside with the dialogue, Miller's chief contribution. But to this viewer it still seems a shallow film despite (or because of) these origins, another to add to the increasingly empty tally created by Rodriguez, even if not quite so annoying as the macho posturing of Once Upon a Time in Mexico - another film in which the director thinks showing 'cool' is the answer to all the requirements of an action narrative - or the self indulgent mess of Lava Girl, come to that. Aided by the author himself (and by Tarantino as well, apparently) Sin City has mostly the same tone throughout, either a gravelly-voice gravitas instituted by the principals or a continuous tone of humourless, hard boiled pastiche - fun in a short film maybe, but wearing after half an hour or so. When lighter-hearted moments did occur - such as when a henchman idly contemplates an arrow through his chest - it was much needed contrast. God help the viewer who opts for the 140 minute expanded edition coming in December.
This while the joining together of different stories, even if it cemented Miller's vision, wasn't exactly subtle either. Gone, certainly, is the narrative skill of Pulp Fiction and perhaps Tarantino could have been brought earlier at the script phase as the arch dialogue, while initially fun, is a million miles from the memorable banter between the thugs of Reservoir Dogs. But perhaps Miller thinks what fits in the speech balloons of a comic is good enough to carry things along on screen over a much longer stretch of time - sadly, it's not.
One doesn't have to be a feminist either to find the treatment of women less than enlightened: either conniving, weakling or, (as a token gesture perhaps) temporarily empowered by the plot only to have the masculinity of events take them over. The whores of Old Town may fire the guns down onto their enemies, but its the men who always do the significant talk and walk. (And wasn't that female-samurai sword killer a new stereotype, something we've seen already in Kill Bill?) The film makes up a sort of adolescent wet dream of 'cool' violence and mild S & M which shows the influence of Tarantino and crowd more than any particular imagination. I've nothing against screen violence, cool or not, but when most else is stripped out so that it becomes the raison d'etre of the narrative, leaving only style behind, it left this viewer at least feeling sorely cheated, and desperate for some variety. A good word here, though for Micky Rourke, who in Marv created the most memorable character and who elicited genuine sympathy; a bad word for Clive Owen who seemed miscast to me, as well as the variable female actresses who populated 'Old Town'. And what's with Bruce Willis' Hartigan? A tough guy who complains about being an old man, close to retirement, on one last case etc, only to be shot endlessly, all this before leaving prison '8 years later'... looking as spruce and as youthful as he went in (greeted by a similarly unchanged Michael Masden I may add)? Maybe I am getting too old, but I found it hard to finish the film, and ultimately I found it irresistible to imagine some of Sin City's most fervent adherents uncritically watching the show on offer with the same rapt, brain-dead expression as the prematurely de-limbed Kevin..