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Tomcat [ 9.0 ]
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Stunning in every way. Beautiful black and white and great cast make this a great comic book adaptation. One of the best of it's kind. Mickey Rourke as Marv is great, perfect in every way.
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Dancing_P [ 9.0 ]
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I've said this before, but this time it's actually topical. Robert Rodriguez is a terrific filmmaker but a very poor storyteller; he makes great-looking movies with awesome action setpieces that also happen to not make a lick of sense. Sin City is finally a step (actually, more like a couple of steps) in the right direction for Rodriguez; it's a film with a strongly defined plot that also happens to be made with Rodriguez's trademark endless gusto. Adapted (translated is perhaps a more apt description) from three of Frank Miller's graphic novels, Sin City details the sordid lives of some of its resident lowlifes. In ''That Yellow Bastard'', Bruce Willis plays Hartigan, a retiring cop with a bad heart on the trail of a creepy pedophile (Nick Stahl). In ''The Hard Goodbye'', Mickey Rourke is Marv, a beastly hoodlum who seeks revenge for the death of the only woman who ever gave him the time of day, Goldie (Jamie King). In ''The Big Fat Kill'', we meet Dwight (Clive Owen) and his girlfriend Shellie (Brittany Murphy); the latter is being harrassed by a psychotic ex (Benicio Del Toro), so Dwight steps in and ends up falling right through. It's savagely violent, gloriously melodramatic and over-the-top... a perfect adaptation of Miller's work. The idea here is to stretch everything to extremes: it's a superhero film noir. This will turn off many viewers; Rodriguez has the subtlety of a sledgehammer, painting everything in broad strokes. The guys have superhuman strength, the women are beautiful and naive, the bad guys are beyond bad and into the depraved; it has no basis in reality whatsoever, a sort of Roadrunner cartoon with smoky bars and decapitations. It's also absurdly faithful to the comic book, keeping to the angles of the panels and the lighting schemes of the comic book. The cast is almost uniformly strong, with Jessica Alba as the only real blip on the radar. It's true that the extremely violent, nihilistic and cartoony nature of the film will put off some viewers (especially those unfamiliar with the comics or who believe in ridiculous concepts such as morals and toned-down aesthetics) but it's the most faithful adaptation of ANYTHING I've ever seen.
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chapter11 [ 9.0 ]
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Predictably throwing my hat in the ring to say, yeah, I loved "Sin City". It's, I dunno, really cool. I'm not sure that I really needed anything else from it, except for maybe a little more out of Nick Stahl and Brittany Murphy and a few others (more as in "more screen time," not more as in "better performances").
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kcremer [ 9.0 ]
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As someone who was unfamiliar with the Frank Miller comic this is based on, I was enthralled from beginning to end. All three stories made me gasp, freak out, and cringe (in that order). Loved the film noir style, the characters, the stories...
Really impressive.
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Jeff_Wilder [ 10.0 ]
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In 2005, Robert Rodriguez gave us that decade's answer to Pulp Fiction as well as the edgiest movie of the era. Adapting Frank Miller's graphic novels to the big screen, Rodriguez fashioned a classic of genuine noir. With great performances from Mickey Rourke (who really should've received an Oscar nomination for his work here), Clive Owen, Bruce Willis, Elijah Wood, Nick Stahl and Rosario Dawson, Sin City is the ultimate dirty fun movie of the past 10 years. Maybe even the past 20 years.
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babyduck [ 7.0 ]
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Purely stylistic in typical Robert Rodriquez style who has had his hits or misses (most notable miss the horrendous Once Upon a Time in Mexico). For some reason though this project of his managed to attract some pretty major talent.
Overly violent, but there's no doubt it does have a unique look and feel to it so it gets points from me for that. But due to this content, has very little replay value for me at least so unfortunately not rated a buy into my DVD collection.
Jessica Alba was hyped but only made her appearance towards the end of the film due to the large ensmble cast that largely does not survive the film.
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Corto [ 7.5 ]
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Well, yeah. I went for the ride, and enjoyed it, but only up to a point. Rodriguez is a good director but not the auteur, in the sense of Tarantino, that this kind of film deserves. Sure it's cool, kind of pointless, in a way entertaining and in the end not all that memorable. The movie is too rapid, it would have worked better if it was an adaptation of just one of the albums, preferably the book one, The Hard Goodbye. Mickey Rourke's comeback was the best thing the film had to deliver.
To answer Jeff's question, it's "some fanboy's wet dream", which I believe to be quite a good premise for any adapted piece of cinema.
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thunderbolt [ 9.5 ]
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Some may say there is "unnecessary violence", but come on, how is that a way to critique a film. The cinematography was just amazing, and makes this movie stand out from all the other stuff that's come out this year.
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DokBrowne [ 9.5 ]
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Whatever. You either go for the ride or you don't. I don't find it necessary to debate it's "significance". I was enthralled and mesmerized and wholly entertained. Yeah, if you scrutinize it too much, there's a chance you'll come away disappointed ('cuz the weight of the dramatic parts is canceled out by the over-the-top wackiness, and vice versa). But technically, was there a point to "Pulp Fiction", either? Despite all the intellectual wanking over it, it really just took you on a wild ride. "Sin City" may be more cartoonish than Tarantino's masterpiece (Rodriguez, for one thing, hasn't an ounce of Tarantino's patience) but it gives you the same kind of rush as you simultaneously marvel at the possibilities of film and indulge in gratuitous extremities of style and "cool" permeating through every shot, line of dialogue, performance, and striking directorial flourishes. Only a couple things don't work about "Sin City" - it's a little too fast-paced for us to either take its deeper, sadder moments seriously or really soak it all in (I wanted to see more with Nick Stahl and Elijah Wood, for starters), and a few of the actors don't acquit themselves very well (namely Michael Madsen, who's awful, Brittany Murphy, Alexis Bledel, and Rosario Dawson, who's somewhat unconvincing). Otherwise, I had an absolute blast, and think that it's a truly great movie. Seriously...lighten up, jeff_v! No one should take this movie so seriously that they're unable to succumb to its immense (albeit admittedly perverse) entertainment value.
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jeff_v [ 4.5 ]
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At the risk of being a grump, I don't see what the point is here. A parody of film noir? A reverse-psychologoy experiment in satiating audience bloodlust (ala Natural Born Killers?) Or just some fanboy's wet dream?
It's like Kill Bill without a soul. Only Mickey Rourke sticks to the ribs; everything else is vaporware. Okay as Midnight Madness fodder, but please take your meds before calling it visionary.
[edit] Remind me again what's so cool about this movie? Night and the City is cool. Kiss Me Deadly is cool. Sin City is film noir for morons, hyping the sex and violence to ridiculous levels --it's the filmic equivalent of premature ejaculation.
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| Weighted Rating | : 7.6 |
| No. Ratings | : 20 | |
| No. Reviews | : 12 | |
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