Sin City
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Movie Reviews of Sin City
Movie Review: Frodo Gone Bad
Summary: 5 Stars
I became a fan of Frank Miller's work the day I opened the pages of "The Dark Knight Returns." Miller took the comic world by storm with his writing style. His characters narrated panels instead of using thought bubbles. They were old, tired adults, not perky superheroes. In Miller's hands, Batman became a weary war veteran desperately looking for a way to end his career without killing himself, Commissioner Gordon worried about his wife, and bad guys were Neo-Nazi naked monstrosities, all teeth and fangs. It was a turning point for comics, transforming them into entertainment for adults, and the medium has never looked back since. It was a turning point for my own writing as well; my stories from that point on took on a completely different feel, all inspired by Miller.
Sin City is what happens when Miller is free to do what he wants. He's a film noir fan at heart and Sin City is every bit an anachronistic blend of comic book action and pulpy dialogue. Fan of film noir will find all the iconic characters in Sin City: the weary integrity of a private eye, the pathos of a gangster past his prime, the desperation of a man wrongly accused of murder, the rage of a psychopath, and of course the femme fatale.
Film noir is also about narration. We hear the characters' thoughts and understand just how desperate and lonely they are. By knowing our protagonists' minds, we can appreciate their paranoia and hopelessness. And in film noir, the world is out to get everybody. There are no good guys; indeed, often the authority figures that would be considered "good" (police officers, priests) are evil and the people deemed least ethical (prostitutes, murderers) are the heroes. Ultimately, whatever innocence any of the characters has is lost. Sin City (short for Basin City, the very bottom of civilization) covers the entire spectrum.
Sin City is actually three mini-movies combined, all taking place at approximately the same time. The plots are from the graphic novels: The Hard Goodbye, That Yellow Bastard, and The Big Fat Kill, with the short story threads The Customer is Always Right and Babe Wore Red thrown in for good measure.
The first and last scenes of the movie perfectly capture the tone of film noir: a beautiful girl and a mysterious dark-haired man meet somewhere. We don't know the circumstances that brought them together but can feel the tension between them. They act like lovers even though they've only just met. But it can only end in blood.
In The Hard Goodbye thread, Marv (Mickey Rourke), a giant monster of a man sleeps with the woman of his dreams, Goldie (Jaime King). He awakens only to find her dead. Marv's not good for much, but he's good at killing, so he gets revenge the only way he knows how: by punching people until they squeal. Eventually, Marv discovers a serial killer who has a taste for ladies of the night. When the two finally meet, we learn that Marv can be just as depraved when he's out for revenge.
No, seriously, it's probably one of the grossest things I've seen in movies in awhile.
In The Big Fat Kill, Dwight (Clive Owen) is the new boyfriend of strip club waitress Shelley (Brittany Murphy). Unfortunately, Shelley has an old boyfriend named Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro), a bad guy who likes to beat up women. Dwight is determined to stop Jackie Boy from killing anyone else, only to trail him to Dwight's own ex-girlfriend Gail (Rosario Dawson) and her Old Towne Girls. The Old Towne Girls are prostitutes who run their own part of town. There are no pimps, no dirty cops, and no mob. Indeed, their part of town almost seems like some kind of nirvana for ladies of the night. And of course, they all dress in extremely kinky outfits when they're not brandishing katanas, wicked-looking knives, throwing stars shaped like swastikas, or Uzis. But Jackie Boy isn't who he seems and it's up to Dwight, Gail, and Miho (Devon Aoki) to keep a head (yes, I said HEAD) safe before a turf war explodes onto the streets.
In That Yellow Bastard, another serial rapist (Rourk Jr., played by Nick Stahl) and son of a senator (Powers Boothe) is the one remaining loose end that good cop Hartigan (Bruce Willis) can't put behind him. On his last day of retirement, Hartigan decides to go after the untouchable Rourk Jr. and save Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba), only to end up in prison for eight years for a crime he didn't commit. We catch up with Hartigan later in the movie when he gets out of prison and discovers that the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Except for Nancy, who in eight years grows up to be a major hottie, an attribute not unnoticed by poor, tortured Hartigan.
There are too many villains to list here, but they are all memorable even in their few moments of screen time. Three notable examples are the hilarious muttering of a lackey with an arrow sticking out of his chest, the elucidating thug who pronounces his every thought out loud Chandler Bing-style, and the hired mercenary who moved from bullets to explosives because, "you just can't go back to shooting people when you've seen a pub blow up and all the parts fly out."
By staying true to the original characters, the director (Robert Rodriguez) creates an entirely new film genre. It makes better use of digital effects first showcased in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and yet never forgets its comic roots. The action pedigree is most evident in Marv, an unstoppable juggernaut who smashes through doors, bounces off of speeding cars, and rips people apart with his bare hands...a few bandages and pills later and he's fine. Good guys and bad guys alike get shot so full of lead that they should be pencils, only to recover in the next scene. The men are all really nasty lugs and the women are all gorgeous and toned.
The movie is filmed in all black and white, with splashes of color for good measure. This achieves two amazing effects: it nails the feel of film noir and draws the viewer's eyes to important things about characters that might otherwise be missed. For example, Dwight wears red sneakers, symbolic of having at least one foot dipped in blood from his murderous past. The use of color, especially Yellow Bastard's...well, yellowishness, makes the character all the more disgusting. Color, when it appears, is as much a character as any actor on screen.
The actors are suitably restrained. If Sin City has a flaw, it's that it's too true to its roots at times, which might alienate modern audiences. Some of the characters have eye-rolling dialogue, but then, that's part of the mood of Sin City. It's not meant to be realistic or even hip. Sin City is true to itself, and it's up to the audience if they want to go along for the ride.
This is the same kind of uncompromising vision that Peter Jackson brought to the screen with Lord of the Rings. By deeply respecting the original creator's work, he shattered the preconceived notions of what a movie should be and conjures something we've never seen before. I was skeptical about a comic book, even Miller's books, being turned into a new format, but Rodriguez did it and he did it with style.
Sin City is dark, violent, and even sadistic at times. But most importantly, it has Frodo (Elijah Wood) as a hopping cannibal. After seeing this film, I will never think of him as a cuddly little hobbit again.
Movie Review: Arguably the most original, brilliant film of the year
Summary: 5 Stars
With the appearance of SIN CITY (I managed to see it at a preview the day before general release), we have what is easily the finest adaptation yet of any graphic novel. Not merely that, this amazing film replicates the visual excitement, dynamic vitality, and dramatic stylization of the genre. SIN CITY isn't merely based on Frank Miller's film noir graphic tales, but an astonishingly accurate translation into a new version. For that reason alone the film would stand out as one of the more remarkable films of recent years.
Thankfully, SIN CITY is much more than a mere screen equivalent of some superb graphic tales: it is by any standard a film of the front rank. The success can be traced primarily to two individuals: director Robert Rodriguez and writer Frank Miller. Most fans will know that Miller has long resisted having his works turned into film, until Rodriguez sent him a brief test piece that would have knocked the hesitation of even the most sceptical author. Miller's stories pay homage to the entire film noir and hardboiled tradition that began with Dashiell Hammett and BLACK MASK magazine (and its imitators) and has continued all the way until today with contemporary masters like James Ellroy, but he also gives each story a remarkable twist, while embedding all in a mythological setting. Rodriguez's genius is in finding effective means to reincarnate these stories digitally. I have been a fan of Rodriguez ever since I saw EL MARIACHI when it first came out, a film that I still consider the best no-budget film ever made, and despite the cost of the film one that will stand comparison with most of the big budget films ever made. I have followed his subsequent career with both delight and dismay, as he did a shockingly inferior Hollywood remake of EL MARIACHI in DESPERADO that was a pale imitation of the original, and then made a string of movies that were either good (the first two SPY KIDS films), interesting if uneven (FROM DUSK TIL DAWN), or perplexingly unsuccessful (DESPERADO and ONCE UPON A TIME N MEXICO). None of these seemed to fulfill the enormous promise of EL MARIACHI. This one does. This is the kind of film that possibly signals the emergence of a very promising director to the level of a great one. The movie truly is that good.
The film features an impressive cast, but this is not an actor's movie and they add less than one might expect. That is not to say that they are not used well. Indeed, Rodriguez uses all of the superbly. Some are almost unrecognizable under various prostheses, in particular Mickey Rourke and Benicio Del Toro, neither of whom you would know was in the film unless made aware of it. This film, in fact, represents something of a comeback for Rourke, who started off in the early 1980s as a hardboiled performer who seemed to have stepped off the pages of a Jim Thompson novel. We've seen Bruce Willis do good things before (in addition to a lot of bad things), so his excellent job as a used up cop almost manically dedicated to preventing a young girl from being raped and murdered is no surprise. Clive Owen, on the other hand, has been better in the past and will be better in the future. One brilliant bit of casting was putting Jessica Alba in a key role (I'll skip the name because it would involve a spoiler). I've always argued with friends that although Alba is without question one of the most stunningly attractive women in movies today, she is oddly not very good at being sexy. Sure, she is sexy in that she has a face and body that are improbably perfect, but instead of radiating sex, she always manages to radiate sweetness and innocence. You see her at length and you inevitably end up thinking, "You know, she seems like she has to be a really sweet soul." That quality comes out here as well, and it tremendously adds to the believability of the story line of which her character is a part. One actor whose presence is memorable even though it involved little contribution on his part was Elijah Wood as Kevin, who looks like a blend between a nerd and a manikin, but fights like a super ninja while sharing some of Hannibal Lecter's less appealing dietary habits.
Each of the three major stories that are intertwined in the film revolves around a primary character acting as knight-errants. In his foundational series of detective novels and stories, Raymond Chandler conceived of Phillip Marlowe as the modern, cynical embodiment of the medieval knight dedicated to fighting for damsels in distress. Miller embraces this ideal completely in the three stories found here. In Bruce Willis's sequence, he sacrifices everything to protect the innocent young Nancy. In Mickey Rourke's amazing Marv sequence, a thuggish, seemingly indestructible, hideous brute of a man expends everything in order to avenge the death of a woman who has shown him a tiny bit of affectionate attention. Clive Owen plays a man who struggles not merely for one woman but for a whole group of women. Who said that chivalry is dead?
Notice that I have gotten this far without saying anything about the technical innovations of the film. Most will know that SIN CITY was primarily filmed by actors in front of green screens, with all of the backgrounds added through CGI. SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW did this, though Rodriguez went so far as even to use digital cameras for the actors. Some reviewers without having seen the film (look at a couple of the earliest reviewers here on Amazon, reviewers who clearly haven't seen the film) are so bothered by this that they automatically dismiss the film. In fact, Rodriguez uses the CGI with great virtuosity, always using it to enhance and devolve the story, never to call attention to itself. The CGI does give the stories much of the feel that one gets reading a comic, such as when Marv attacks two would-be hit men, shoving one into a brick wall, causing an indentation in it. Unlike SKY CAPTAIN, however, the focus was always on the story and the characters, and not on the CGI. The distribution company (Rodriguez is essentially his own studio, he and his wife operating on their own in Austin, Texas) complained about the film being in black and white, but it was a perfect choice. There is a considerable amount of colorization, most of it to great effect. For instance, in the opening sequence, a man is talking to a woman and mentions her eyes, and at the word "eyes" they go from black and white to a subtle green.
I honestly feel that this film represents a turning point in several ways. First, it might represent the complete shift from Robert Rodriguez from promising director to a full-fledged master. Second, it could be the film that provides the model for all that follow in the correct use of CGI. Third, it could serve as the pattern for future adaptations for the filming of graphic novels. But all that aside, people need to see this because it is one of the best and most original films of the past couple of years.
Movie Review: Miller's spirit on screen--
Summary: 5 Stars
Cannibal teens, psychotic hookers, talking dead bodies, yellow skinned child rapists, and a disfigured psycho with an affinity for trench coats. The third corner of hell? No, it's all mundane in Sin City, thus is the oddities presented in the Frank Miller created series of graphic novels. Miller set forth a legacy in 1991 when he created a series of incomparable visionary graphic novels called "Sin City" which had no superheroes, no intergalactic madmen, and no demonic entities, only the horror of mankind and the back alleys of the worst city in the world. Miller created a dark grim neo-noir series that would forever be revered among comic book creators, and when this movie was set to release, I never read any of the issues. While, being a hardcore comic geek I was aware of Sin City, I had never read the novels, and I bought them as soon as possible, and I wasn't disappointed. Perhaps it's something within mankind the series reflects, taboos that Miller tackles within the smoky haze, never-ending darkness, and introversion amidst the heroes whom are constantly teetering over to the dark side to justify the means.
One thing Frank Miller mastered with this series was though the books basically examined evil men fighting evil men, you could easily distinguish which people were fighting for a good cause and which people weren't. "Sin City" is an amazing series of comic books with incredible stories of crime and vengeance and director Robert Rodriguez presents a 99 percent accurate depiction in his adaptation of the hit series. Rodriguez sacrificed a lot for the sake of converting the series to the big screen and having Miller along with him directing at his side, they created one incredible piece of filmmaking that will surely become a classic. For years, even to this day, pretentious bookworms still like to refer to comic books as nothing but a kids medium with nothing to add to intellect or even imagination, but Miller basically proved them wrong turning a kids medium into an versatile medium with series and stories worthy of literature.
Sin City is not for kids, and as evident by the R rating, Rodriguez does not shy away from the violent content featured so prominently in the book. For people who have yet to read the books, they'll be disgusted and simply offended by the violent content featured, but the violent content does manage to bear a relevance in the books presenting the grim atmosphere present only in noir. And perhaps the most annoying of the crowd of skeptics and critics are the neo-feminists who basically dismissed this movie as sexist and misogynistic to women when basically men are depicted basically the same way. Women are hookers, lesbians, and sadomasochists, men are rapists, child molesters, killers, and abuse women. See how it all evens out Ms. L.S. from a certain Entertainment magazine? Well, they're basically wrong, and ignorant in their ways. Childish, ain't I?
Rodriguez along with Miller at his side manages to capture the mood perfectly for the book with everything from the comic books adapted on the screen with pin point accuracy, and this comic book fan is pleased. I loved the series, and was satisfied to see Rodriguez stuck true to the source material featuring a world comprised mostly of computer generated effects but manages to accurately capture the mood and dark atmosphere in which the tales take place. The story is set with three segments, all intertwined with one another to make the fluid story of Sin City, all of which is topped off with an amazing all-star cast of actors including Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson, Bruce Willis, the unbelievably hot Jessica Alba, and many other people from Nick Stahl, Benicio Del Toro right down to the bad-ass Powers Boothe, all of which are mixed in the tale of Sin City; and all of the dramatic operas are about vengeance and revenge, not to mention the great opening, and closer, which was the first time I actually enjoyed seeing Josh Hartnett on screen. I'd have to devote a list to the number of stars who appeared in this film, but it is surely an ensemble piece that even made Jaime King look talented! That's a feat in itself that Rodriguez and Miller accomplish.
The entire cast gives excellent performances and a few performances basically stood out for me, especially a certain Mickey Rourke who is just bad ass as the disfigured Marv who is framed for killing the only girl who ever loved him, and then there's Clive Owen and Rosario Dawson whom are just great in their segment. The most dramatic of the segments is left for last starring Bruce Willis as retired cop John Hartigan who nearly kills the senator's son, who happens to be a child killer, and is framed for the crime. The segment includes three good performances from Willis, the unbelievably hot Jessica Alba, and Nick Stahl who plays bad so, so good. I wish he were the villain more often. The movie, which has been compared to "Pulp Fiction" (I love the books but that comparison is a bit of a hyperbole, and I'm not even a Tarantino fan), is one of the best comic book movies ever made, simply because it keeps the original quality of the book while losing none of the cache from the stories and never compromises Miller's artistic integrity which Hollywood would have originally done, and Rodriguez as always gives some amazing direction.
The storyboards for the film consisted of pages from the actual comic used, and it's like taking scenes from a movie on to a new movie. Miller always prided himself in being a rebel. Having had many bad experiences with Hollywood, he declared that he'd make his books like movies, and the man is brilliant. Read his work on Daredevil, Batman, and this series, and you shall see. You shall see, my friend. Miller is like a movie director who never was. If studio execs, my mortal enemy, hadn't jerked this guy around, he would have made an amazing director, and it took Rodriguez, another Hollywood stalwart to see that. It takes brilliance to notice brilliance, and Rodriguez did much of the movie's work in his own home studio and really managed to pack a wallop of the movie for fans of both comics and noir, and Rodriguez doesn't alienate non-comic book fans, he invites people to bask in the excellence that is Sin City, but he does something some studios have yet to do, he honors the fans in the process. Seriously, I can discuss this movie forever, but I'll spare you the extra reading.
Hot chicks, big guns, bad ass bruisers, what more could you ask for? This is neo-noir for the new millennium baby, and one of the best comic book movies ever made that noir fans will also really enjoy. Yes, the line above was cliché, but I don't care, this movie rocked with excellent performances, great stories, great direction, and just a hip style that hasn't been achieved since "Pulp Fiction". This movie kicks Hollywood in the nuts, and I hope they felt that.
Movie Review: A Masterpiece: the Best Movie of the Year
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm fourteen by the way. Stumbling upon comic books in the 6th grade, I read such graphic novels like, Hellboy, the 30 Days of Night trilogy, Hellblazer, and the League of Extraordinary Gentleman, I stumbled upon Sin City. I read the third of the Sin City books first, The Big Fat Kill, just this January and I loved it! So then I read all of them in about three days and fell instantly in love with the series. They're my favorite comic books.
Reading Sin City is like watching an old black and white crime movie or film noir to say the least. It's a crime comic that rivals Batman and Daredevil.There are no super heroes in the books only: prostitutes, ex-convicts, losers, crooked cops and politicians, psyhcopathic cannibals, tough guys, dames, hitmen, and a yellow creature called the Yellow Bastard. Sin City, also known as Basin City, is populated by these colorful characters and their vignettes. Sin City is where dreams and hopes can come true if you have enough money or are rich enough to pay for these things to happen. It's also a town of redemption, love, lust, sex, violence, and tragedy. Each story, each book, is like a Greek tragedy or a Shakepeareian play but instead with sex, action, snappy dialouge, neo-noir style, and of course gallons of blood and gore.
Which brings me to the film. I'd like to say a big thanks to Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, and Quentin Tarantino for directing this masterpiece. This is the truest adaptation of a comic book ever to be put on the big screen.
Sin City, the film, is action-packed, darkly funny, sexy (Jessica Alba is a babe!), gruesomely violent (one of the violentist movies ever made), and the most entertaining film I have seen this year, not to mention the best! The movie is kind of like a 21st century Pulp Fiction, because there are intertwining story lines in it. The film is based upon Frank Miller's most acclaimed of his graphic novels: The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill, the short story, The Customer is Always Right, and That Yellow Bastard, my favorite of the series.
The film starts out with a bang; a prolouge, The Customer is Always Right. A hitman (Josh Hartnett) and his potential victim (Marley Shelton) fall in love and then Shelton gets a hole blown into her. This sets up the movie for the wild roller coaster ride that is about to come.
The film starts off with the part of the story from the Yellow Bastard, than we move on to the Hard Goodbye. Marv (Mickey Rourke) is a tough as nails hulking giant who has a face uglier then the Hulk's. He sleeps with hooker, Goldie (Jamie King) and discovers that she is the love of his life. But Marv finds, out while sleeping in bed with the hooker, that she was killed by cannibilistic Kevin (Elijah Wood). Marv, very pissed-off, goes on a manhunt looking for his dead lover's killer, bringing down crooked cops and hitmen with him. With the help of his parol officer Lucille (Carla Gugino)Marv will get his revenge one way or another.
The next story, The Big Fat Kill, is about how Dwight (Clive Owen) tries to protect his girlfriend Shellie (Brittany Murphy) from crooked cop and binge drinker Jackie Boy (Benecio Del Toro). When the cop goes too far, by mingling the balance of the Old Town prostitute system, he is killed by Gail (Rosario Dawson) and Miho (Devon Aoki)and several of the girls of Old Town. When they find out what they've done and the events they have put into action, it's going to take a lot of time to figure out this mess with the mob and cops of Sin City, and Dwight is going to have to take out Old Towns trash.
The last story of the movie, That Yellow Bastard, is about how Hartigan (Bruce Willis)a detective with a bum-ticker, who is retiring in one hour, tries to go out with a bang by trying to save Nancy Callahan (younger: Makenzie Vega, older: sexy Jessica Alba)from rapist/pedophile and son of crooked Senator Roark (Powers Boothe), Junior (Nick Stahl). Hartigan puts Junior in a coma, framed for the crime of raping Nancy, shot down by his partner Bob (Michael Madsen) and is too, put in a coma. Several years later, Hartigan is in prison and gets out. He tries to save Nancy again, who has become a stripper at a Bar, from Junior who has, after years of plastic surgery, been transformed into the hideous Yellow Bastard. Will Hartigan prevail?
Sin City is a triumph in comic-book movies and cinema. It is interesting the way Rodriguez executes the feel, look, and style that is Sin City, creating the visuals and backgrounds that makes up Basin City; with the help from the creator himself, Frank Miller and the stylish direction of Tarantino.
The best performances in the movie are from these actors: Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Jessica Alba, Bruce Willis, Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Rosario Dawson, Brittany Murphy, Rutger Hauer, Powers Boothe, and Nick Stahl, who I think did the best job than any other actor in the movie; it was his break-out performance.
Although Sin City isn't for everyone's taste (I know that because my mom nearly ran out of the theater screaming) the film is awesome and visually stunning. If you're a fan of the books, like movies that have intertwining story lines, movies with action and blood and gore, movies with snappy and funny dialogue, neo-noir genred films, black-white-and colored films, or just like watching a breathtaking and shocking movie, Sin City is probably for you. It'll make you cringe, it'll make you gasp, have you on the edge-of-your-seat, and make you laugh. The movie was for me, and I'm only fourteen!
WARNING: Do not bring your little children to this film! When I went to the theater there was at least four families that brought their six to seven year old kids to the movie, and they cried and screamed through-out because of the violence, subject matter, nudity, and sex (there is only one sex scene in te movie). Please leave your little'uns at home with the sitter; they put they spawned MPAA rating for a reason folks! And a another thing: watch this film ONLY if you have the stomach to take it in. Even though the scenes of violence are stylized and usually in black and white, it is still pretty intense! Even though I've read the comic and knew what was going to happen I shut my own eyes a couple times. Be ready for beatings, gunshot wounds, stabbings, explosions, castration (yes it's shown), brains being blown out the side of people's head, people being hit or shot at with baseball bats, bow and arrows, hatchets, swords, sledgehammers and whips, decapatation, fist-fights, martial-arts violence, blood squirting out at a rapid pace, intestines, brains, human-flesh and gore, cannibalism, strangulation, and vomiting. You've been warned.
Movie Review: Revolutionary Filmmaking
Summary: 5 Stars
Going into the spring of 2005, Sin City quickly became the most anticipated film....well, really the only greatly anticipated movie of a rather dull spring movie season. This was not without good cause; in making Sin City directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller were attempting to do something which had never even been thought of up to this point; to make a direct comic book translation. Not an adaptation, a translation. A translation of page to screen. Going in, of course, there were some doubts about whether this could even be done. Well, I'm glad to say, Rodriguez and Miller triumphed in their revolutionary task. Sin City is everything it could be, and maybe a bit more.
But before all of that. Before the springtime hype of Sin City...I had already jumped the bandwagon. Several months before, actually. All the way back to the late summer of 2004 when Sin City's director Robert Rodriguez released an 8-minute preview of his film. It was, in short, utterly fantastic. The tone was unbelievably pulpy, the cinematography revolutionary, and the acting almost classic. As if this film were shot in the 40s or 50s rather than the current day. As a avid fan of Film Noir these were all very, very good signs for me.
Of course, having been introduced to this...genius, really, I immediately ran out and purchased one of the many graphic novels Sin City is based on; The Hard Goodbye. Frankly, it was the best comic book I ever read. Still is. The combination of gritty, noir-to-the-max storytelling, and stark back and white art was simply mind-blowing. Just as the film that would proceed it, The Hard Goodbye was groundbreaking, and just plain damn good. Sin City was now one of my most anticipated films of 2005, if not the most anticipated.
But, as a cruel twist of fate would have it, just as Sin City was FINALLY being released theatrically, I came down with a rather nasty cold, which prevented me from seeing it for almost 2 weeks. When I finally recovered however, and made it to my local theater to see what I just knew would be a masterpiece, I was...to put it bluntly, a bit let down. I loved the opening short-story, which I had already seen thanks to the 2004 preview, as well as the first story of Marv, and The Hard Goodbye. But sadly, the other two tales The Big Fat Kill, and That Yellow Bastard seemed very hollow, too fast-paced, and even a bit pointless.
At first, I chalked this up to over-hype on my part. Raising my expectations too high. Then, later, I realized the true cause; while I had read The Hard Goodbye, I had not yet explored the other two adapted novels. This knowledge, and experience, of the source, is quite key I believe to fully...realizing Sin City's greatness. Having now read both of the other books, and seen Sin City the film again, I can confirmed that is true...for me at least. I am now able to enjoy Sin City to its fullest. So now moving past my problems of pre-conceived notions and lack of knowledge for the source material, I can deliver my "true" review of Sin City.
The three stories which make up Sin City, obviously, are all similar in plot and tone. It's all about revenge and violence. And it's hammered at you fast and often. Due to the whole method of direct translation, the pacing is quick, but enjoyable. We are almost whisked through scene after scene, story after story. As our lead character(s) deliver hard-boiled monologues to tie it all together. This pacing also allows for excellent "rewatchability" factor. The two hours goes by quickly, and you'll never mind popping it into the DVD player as often as possible. The violence in the film is, as you probably have heard, gratuitous and sometimes grotesque. However it all takes on a very cartoony-feel as characters survive impossible psychical torment and pain. Getting hit in the face with a sledgehammer or getting hit by a car means nothing in Sin City, and our heroes (or villains) come out of it with barely a scratch. Even the more serious injuries inflicted (such as a two castration), is done in such a way that makes it seems, as crazy as it sounds, a bit less brutal than the stuff we usually see in violence-ridden films.
Save for a hammy and unbelievably over-the-top Michael Madsen (which I won't go into), nearly all of the performances in Sin City are first rate. Some even bordering on the spectacular. One of these, is the film's undoubtable star, Mickey Rourk as the brutish Marv. His performance is both mean and nasty. But, oddly...likeable. In his writings creator Frank Miller injected Marv with a large amount of solemn dignity and empathy, and Rourk brings this to life beautifully. Marv's a bad guy. But a bad guy with good intentions, and a good heart. Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Nick Stahl, Jessica Alba and rest of the All-Star cast all give noticeable strong performances. Even Elijah Wood's silent role as the mute cannibal Kevin is excellent in an eery and villainous tone.
The score of the film is impressive as well. Written by Rodriguez himself, it's an excellent collection of classic bass lines, and horn pieces adding to the cult tone of the film.
Of course, if you're talking about Sin City, you have to talk about the visuals and CGI. These are both done excellently. The cinematography is some of the best I've ever seen. From it's comic book originated shot selection and angles, to its stark black, white and silver palate, Sin City is truly art brought to life, and its truly a pleasure to view and watch. The CGI, while nothing groundbreaking, is near perfectly blended with live actors and sets, to really bring alive this city of corruption and crime. But the best feature of the CGI would have to be its overall ambiguity. Except for a bad animation here or there, it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb, which should assure this film will stand the test of time and technological advances.
The movie obviously isn't for everyone. Some may very well me turned away, or even disgusted with the violence and bleak resolution of the film. But for fans of the genre, like myself, Sin City is just about as perfect as any film could hope to be. Despite a flaw or two inherent in this type of translation, the director, writer, and actors all play their parts perfectly in not only bring the comic book to the screen, but bring the screen back to comic books.