Sin City

SIN CITY
(DIRECTOR: FRANK MILLER and ROBERT RODRIQUEZ)

Before I get into the actual review, I would like to make a note of something. Chris will probably be getting his reviews in before mine on most occasions. Therefore, since most of you will have already read his, I will only give out my opinion and not reitirate the entire plot, because I feel he does a very good job of that. You can always refer back to his reviews obviously if you need to know story points that coincide with my opinion.

I have made it known that in an earlier post about my utter distaste for all of the movies that have been released here so far in 2005, and in the first twenty minutes of "Sin City," I had a feeling my opinion of this year's releases was not going to change. The opening scene with Josh Hartnett's assassin character was a decent opening, but it surely didn't get me all excited about what was coming next. Then watching Michael Madsen give one of the most god awful performances I have ever seen along with some terrible narration from Bruce Willis's character, I was getting less enthused by the second. And when I say Madsen's performance is that bad I am not exaggerating. If you looked up overracting and terrible delivery in an acting instruction manual I hope they have a picture of this scene for reference.

But as everyone already knows this is a movie with many stories, and the next story that comes up is the one dealing with Mickey Rourke. Once that story kicked into gear, I found myself, for the first time this entire year, getting interested in a movie. I actually wanted to know what was going to happen next as opposed to being annoyed I was out of gummy bears and wondering if I was actually going to miss anything by leaving to grab another box and maybe make a few phone calls.

So, let's begin with the good in "Sin City:"

First, Mickey Rourke has finally been given a charcter he can knock out of the ballpark again. Mickey Rourke use to get all of the great roles that people like Sean Penn get now. It has been almost twenty years since his last great performance (Angel Heart; which if you haven't seen, SHAME ON YOU! GO RENT THE FUCKER NOW!!!). I wouldn't be surprised if Frank Miller had Rourke in mind for this character when he wrote the graphic novels because it suits Rourke to a tee. This will go down as one of the biggest badass roles in the history of cinema; think Harry Callahan meets Rambo; think Marcellis Wallace meets Castor Troy. There are a lot of other nice performances in this movie as well; Elijah Wood is creepy as hell as the cannibalistic serial killer; Rosario Dawson gives a lot of weight to a very non stereotypical "tough as nails" hooker.

Second, I love the grittiness of the film. I'm not only talking about the look of the film, which does play a big part in the film's success, but the writing, performances, and pacing play in this as well. This is the most relentless film I've seen in a long time, and I love relentless. It doesn't always make a film good, but it's admirable in its own way. The look of the film is great. The black and white horror zone is probably the only logical way to present Frank Miller's world. And it also helps tone down the excessive violence when the MPAA takes a look. It's basically the same reason Tarantino had to use anime and black and white film for some of the sequences in the "Kill Bill" movies.

Finally, and sue me for this because I'm a man, but thank you Carla Gugino for doing the nude scene. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Now as for the not so good and the bad:

Some of these performances did not add up to much. I already mentioned Madsen, but I was not too impressed with Clive Owen either, which was dissapointing. This is the man who made "King Arthur" bearable not to mention the great performances he's given in brilliant films (The Croupier, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, and Closer). I still can't figure out why Brittany Murphy gets jobs; she almost ruined sections of "8 Mile" for me. As for Nick Stahl's child molestor which later becomes Yellow Bastard, it was uneven at best. And even with the good performances such as Elijah Wood's character, there just wasn't enough of some of these guys. They had to get all of these stories in under two hours, and so there is some neglection. I could've watched an entire movie with Mickey Rourke hunting down Elijah Wood. I guess in a way that's almost a compliment, but couldn't we have had less of Michael Madsen and Yellow Bastard.

The writing overall was fine, but way too much narration. I have always felt that narration is an unimaginative way to get exposistion across. I understand that this is paying homage to classic Film Noir, but even a lot of those films could've done without so much voiceover. Narration ranks up there with psychics, and deus ex machina.

And finally, only one of the stories (Rourke's) was really engaging from beginning to end. The other two stories, and I guess three if you count Hartnett's, just didn't carry the dramatic weight that Rourke's did. It's really no fault of the writing or the performances so much, it's just the story really wasn't there. And as Chris has pointed out, and I agree, story is what keeps it going. Nice visuals are great, good one-liners are fun, scary monsters, big shoot outs, and cool car chases can be exciting, but if you don't have the story to back all this up then it usually doesn't add up to a whole lot.

Still, in the end, I did really like "Sin City." It's a very entertaining movie that could have been so much more. But Rourke and Wood's section of the film alone make it worth watching again, so I would definately reccomend it. I just can't figure out why Harry Knowles and company are masturbating over this thing like it's "The Godfather."

FINAL GRADE: B

I'm out.