Visually glamorous and beautifully crafted...

Rating: 10/10 (25 June 2006)

Sin City is a film that is a mix-mesh of comic book fantasy realm, sharp, striking noir-esquire settings and format, and pure adrenal action that all runs together perfectly. Based on the "Sin City" graphic novel series by Frank Miller, the film stays amazingly faithful to the source material, while at the same time exercising the freedom to break from the confines of the graphic novel frames and become a movie that stands out from the rest. The film, shot in color and then converted to seductive hi-definition black-and-white (mixed with many objects and settings of glorious colors that jump out from the screen), has a dark, noirish feeling the whole way through and never fails to satisfy. It takes you deep into the psychological wastelands of it's three main characters: Marv (a big, Frankenstein-type guy who's Hell-bent on vengeance), Dwight (a guy with good intentions who is trying to protect a gaggle of prostitutes from enemies ranging from corrupt cops to mob bosses), and Hartigan (an old on-the-verge-of-retirement cop with a heart condition who will do anything to protect an innocent girl from a rapist pedophile, who happens to be the son of a very corrupt senator). The story's characters appear and fall out of each other's lives, much like a Pulp Fiction-type movie. The action and excessive violence, while quite often far-fetched, serves as a nice tool to keep the movie in a fantasy/comic book setting. The dialogue, while not usually top-notch (and on a few conditions a tad cheesy) is delivered well, albeit with a little too much melodrama. Still, the acting is well-done, no actor seems out of place with their character. Perhaps the best thing about Sin City, though, is the fact that, unlike other comic book-movie adaptations, it is not really a comic book-turned-movie; rather, it is more a comic book that, while put on-screen and into the format of a movie, still has the feeling like a comic book the whole way through, even though it has broken past the confines of the graphic novel pages. And is it re-playable? I gotta tell ya, after this movie ended, I wanted to just start it right over and watch it again.