Sin City

[squakMix]

Looks good :up: Think i might see it sometime soon.

Anyone else looking forward to it?

[Bisho]

Yup, it looks like it is going to be a different movie then any other. However, my newspaper rated it **1/2 stars out of 5*****. But they always rate stuff like that. The blood looks like bandades.

Credit The Daily News
REVIEW – Trailers can be sneaky. For instance, the trailers for Sin City would have you believe Bruce Willis and Clive Owen are its big male leads. There’s hardly a mention of Mickey Rourke, who carries a good third of the film on his prosthetically enhanced shoulders.

Surprisingly, this turns out to be a good thing. Rourke’s lovestruck monster, seeking revenge for the murder of a hooker who brightened up his life for a night, is the closest thing to human, or humour, in this homage to nihilism.

Sin City is based, with obsessive visual accuracy, on the comics created by Frank Miller, who co-directs with Robert Rodriguez. (Quentin Tarantino “guest” directs a small scene, which is notable for its down-to-earth silliness amongst all the angst and anguish).

There are three vaguely intertwined stories, all taking place in dark and dangerous Basin City.

In the first one, sinfully ugly Marv (Rourke, in make-up that enhances his already frightening features) wakes up with a dead woman in his bed, and rampages through the city trying to find her killers.

This is no Beauty and the Beast story, though. Marv is ugly on the outside and the inside. But his warped sense of chivalry is almost poignant, and gives a crazy, driven energy to this story that’s lacking in the other two.

In the second and weakest section, Sin City’s prostitutes, who run their own show thanks to an uneasy alliance with the cops, are threatened with a return to the bad old days of pimps and drugs. The noir-est of the film’s three noir heroes, Dwight (Clive Owen), tries to protect them.

And in the third story, Bruce Willis plays an aging cop who saves little Nancy from a murderous pedophile, and then has to save not-so-little Nancy, all grown up into a lasso-tossing stripper (played with less heat than expected by Jessica Alba), from the same evil monster.

Sin City wears its lack of heart proudly on its sleeve. But what starts off as cool and gripping eventually becomes ugly and depressing. As the dismembered corpses pile up, so does the pointlessness.

Initially, Sin City is stunning to behold, with its ultra-saturated black-and-white scenes, with the occasional splash of red blood. (Generally, the blood is white, and looks oddly like melted vanilla ice cream. This lends some of the gorier scenes the look of a food fight gone terribly wrong.)

It’s a wonderful movie to look at, until it isn’t anymore; the eye begins to long for something familiar to engage with, and the faithfulness with which a comic book world is represented begins to look like lack of imagination.

Despite all the tough girls with guns and swords — damsels in distress that the script keeps referring to as “strong,” even as it assaults and abuses them — Sin City is completely without female agency. It might as well be a beer commercial. Perhaps this is divine retribution for Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, or Ice Princess, but still. The female characters — wait, there aren’t actually any female characters, just young actresses like Alba, Brittany Murphy and Rosario Dawson (who does pull off an impressive snarl) doing a great job displaying their assets and ignoring their talents.

For their part, Rodriguez and Miller expend much of their talent finding new angles to display those same boobs and bums. Sin City is the Citizen Kane of lingerie ads.

Sin City. **1/2 (of 5 stars) Starring Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Clive Owen, Elijah Wood. Directed by Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller. Rated R.

[bgesley]

So far I think the only good review is the Washington Post, the new york times and I think the Chronicle were reviewed by COMPLETE MORONS. I don't want to sound racist or sexist but what would an indian woman(one of the reviewers) know about Sin City? I don't think they read the books or expected them to be comics instead of a graphical novel which is what Frank Miller was really doing with Sin City.

I saw it with my brother on openning day and we both agreed we were COMPLETELY satisfied. The movie was exactly as it should have been made. The things they left out from the books were trivial pointless things so I didn't feel bad for that. Unline Spiderman where they messed the story up.

For lack of a better word... it was perfect.

[spiderbaby1958]

It reminded me of first Batman movie, which I loved. It was popping with deft visual surprises.

[Mr Jones]

Where were you when it was brought up last time..?
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=203724

[LuigiHann]

Heh. According to IGN, it's the most faithful comic book conversion of all time.
They also said that it's mostly a movie for guys, and that girls wouldn't like it.

[bgesley]

I'd have to agree with IGN on this one. I've read the books its based on (and then some) and its very accurate. It not only got the dialog and camera angles right, it captured the very tone and atmosphere that Sin City is known for.

But then again isn't it obvious that it would be the most faithful comic book to movie conversion of all time considering that the creator, Frank Miller, co-directed it?

[Fickle]

Best film I've seen in quite a bit.

[cyu]

I just finished seeing it an hour ago. Superb, that Kevin kid was fucked up. He'll be in my nightmares.

[RipTheSystem]

I grew up reading comics so I'm surprised that I never read this series (I knew it existed). It was great and 3 couples of baptists offended themselves and left the movie never to return.

[bgesley]

the offended themselves?

"baptists suck! omg I can't believe I said that, I'm leaving!"

[shakey_snake]

79% on the tomato meter
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sin_city/

[gothic_hobbit]

It's not out in the UK till june though :o