Here's a review I agree with from "Ace Of Spades."
Sin City is one of the most cinematically-gorgeous movies I've ever seen. Black and white is used to startlingly evocative effect, and the camera does a great job of capturing the stark and melodramatic compositions of well-drawn comics. Color is dabbled onto the canvas here and there, and that looks lovely as well, but I think the black and white itself could easily have carried the day. The colorization is a bit gimmicky, and we've seen it before... all the way back in that dumb Elton John video.
This movie has made it safe to shoot in black and white again. Expect there to be more black and white films. And they'll look amazing.
The credits are odd: the film is "shot and cut" by Robert Rodriguez -- have you ever seen that credit before? -- and directed by "Frank Miller [the comic's author] and Robert Rodriguez." Plus, a special "guest director" named Quentin Tarrantino. Tarrantino hasn't shown me anything since Pulp Fiction, but whatever he contributed here is good, because it's all good.
The film is ultraviolent, as you might expect, but in a fun way. A lot of people have described this film as having no "good guys." That's not really true. There are three genuine heroes, even if one is a violent monster of a thug suffering from psychotic hallucinations, and one is an ex-murderer (who, in a bit of one of the film's problems with repetition and similar characters, also apparently is prone to psychotic halluciantions). And then there's a genuine moral heroine in Jessica Alba, and a minor heroine in Brittany Murphy, who's really more cute and spunky than a genuine heroine, but whatever.
And of course Bruce Willis, playing a non-wisecracking version of John McClane.
Basically, the movie is a mix between Pulp Fiction -- violent vignettes lightly connected in entwining storylines -- and L.A. Confidential. In fact, an awful lot of the characterization is taken from L.A. Confidential. But whereas LAC featured three distictive heroes -- Jack Vincennes, the sleazy cop who develops a conscience; Ed Exley, the smart and ambitious tight-ass; and Bud White, the hulking, brutish thug who sees it as his personal mission to protect abused women -- this film also features three heroes, but all of them are Bud White.
Mickey Roarke is a hulking monster, looking a bit like Quasimodo before the first coffee of the day, who cannot abide the abuse of women and uses brutality and mayhem to save them.
Clive Owens is the handsome cypher with a dark past who also cannot abide the abuse of women, and who also uses brutality and mayhem to save them.
Bruce Willis -- turning in another fine performance -- is the One Good Cop in the dirty city, about to retire (the film claims he's "pushing sixty," which provoked chuckles from the audience), who also, get this, cannot abide the abuse of women -- or at least one specific woman, a little girl he saved years before -- and who also also uses brutality and mayhem to save her.
Repetition is the only real problem with the film... we see an awful lot of hands being chopped off, and at least three instances of villains having their genitals either shot off (or, in one grim scene, ripped off by hand). Mickey Roarke goes on a suicide mission to save a woman from a creepy farmhouse guarded by corrupt cops; and wouldn't you know it, an hour later Bruce Willis goes to the same creepy farmhouse guarded by corrupt cops to save another woman.
That said, the film is a hell of a good time. The dialogue (60% of it narrative voice-overs) is over the top noir-speak, sometimes ludicrous, but the spirit of the film, and its inherently gonzo nature, makes it all work. There are dangerous men and beautiful (and also dangerous) dames -- more dangerous dames than dangerous men, actually, as the "Old City" is controlled entirely by what appear to be covert-ops trained whores -- and there are gorgeous shots of long twisty LA-ish coastal highways, cigarettes being lighted left and right, driving rain and driving in the rain, and it's always nightime, sometime around 3am it seems...
It's basically every noir film you've ever seen turned up to 11, or actually about three notches above 11. Sort of the Raiders of the Lost Ark for violent pulp noir. |
