How do I Hate Thee Let Me Count the Ways

Rating: 8/10 (24 April 2005)

How do I Hate Thee Let Me Count the Ways Before I watched this sorry excuse for a movie I had some ideas for some of the worst movies ever. This is very close to the worst movie ever made, if not the worst movie ever. Every movie that won a Golden Raspberry should be an Oscar contender compared to this. The plot revolves around the various citizens of Basin City, nicknamed Sin City. This is a town full of corrupt cops, murderous prostitutes, rampaging lunatics, evil priests, and any other vile character you can think of, with no good guys in the town Sin City sounds like a decent nickname. This movie is nothing more than an exercise in violence, gore, some sex, mutilation, cannibalism, flying blood, murder, and almost anything else designed to disgust your average viewer. The rampant violence had no real point, the extreme, and sometimes sickening scenes seemed to be there for no reason, but no, this is art. Sure murder and cannibalism have so much artistic expression. This movie has the artistic expression of a broken pencil, but there's probably someone that thinks a broken pencil has artistic expression, after seeing this movie I don't know what to think.
I don't know how people can get shot 40 times and get minor injuries. People can get punched and it doesn't even scar them. Violence is so glorified and worse so unrealistic here. I have been assaulted, it is not fun, there is no glory in it, nothing fun, getting beat up is not nearly as vogue as it is here. If I had been shot 40 times I would not be laughing about it I would be dead. I have not seen a movie that glorified violence as much as this movie. This film makes sheer violence for the sake of violence look like it's all a game. The second most violent movie is like the Care Bears compared to this. Sin City tries to create an atmosphere of film noir. It is in black and white, and shot in a unique film noir camera style, giving the movie an interesting premise. The film starts out fascinating, and fairly interesting, but after 20 minutes the movie bombs. I never thought I would say the best part of a movie had Josh Hartnett in it.
Some promoters said nothing like this movie had been seen before, neither had the Hindenburg, but that doesn't mean it was a good thing. This movie has the distinction of being the most violent movie and the most boring movie ever made. I looked at my watch more than a few times during this movie hoping it was over. I wanted to fall asleep, and I wasn't tired, the movie dragged on and on for more than two hours and had virtually no points of interest past the beginning. I never knew a movie could be this boring, but yet again I was proved wrong, this movie makes dripping water look interesting. Part of the reason this movie was so boring were the characters, I can understand over the top acting and characters, but the acting in this movie was awful, their characterizations made the acting the quality of a first grade play. I have never seen a group of characters so unbelievable and so awful, to the point that just looking at any of these people is revolting. Even with a cast of Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Rutger Hauer, Michael Clarke Duncan, and so many others should be at least decent. It isn't. The most repulsive of the characters is Rosario Dawson a dominatrix prostitute who leads a bunch of hookers in trying to save the lot of whores from a pimp who wants to control them. She gives bad acting a new idol, I hope I never have to see Rosario Dawson try to act again. All she does is add to this movies sexist tone. Almost every woman, if not all women are victims, who must be protected by strong men, women for the most part are unable to take care of themselves, and every woman in this movie is a sex object, someone who is valued primarily if not solely for sex, in some capacity.
The movie has some attacks on politicians, police, and especially the Catholic church, and the city tries to resemble a major American city, but none in particular besieged by corruption, poverty and crime. But as everything in this movie does, it is all taken to the extreme. Any minor or marginal social commentary becomes an excuse for more violence, or another way to try and shock the audience. I can see immature people, especially kids saying "Hey cool you can shoot someone 50 times and they can still be alive!" And you know this could happen, if it happened with the Three Stooges, who knocked each other on the heads with hammers and wrenches, and survived unbruised, it could happen here. If you are considering watching this movie (And I strongly advise against it) Keep in mind the only thing that kept this movie from being NC-17 was due to the fact it was filmed primarily in black and white. I think this movie still should have had an NC-17 rating, this movie was very very very very violent, and too much of the gore was shown in color for my taste. I wish I had never seen this movie, heard of this movie or had anything to do with this movie. Sin City is like looking at day old road kill: and you wish you hadn't looked at it. Both will probably make you gag, they both have that same kind of effect. If you want to see a good comic book movie watch Spider man, that is fun to watch, this movie is horrible, beyond horrible to no end and if you paid a cent to see it you wasted your money.