A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

The Evaluation System Reviews by Title Reviews by Date

Reviews from Video Reviews of the Classics Personal Background

Title: Sin City

Date Viewed: 4/2/05

Details:

Bruce Willis

Mickey Rourke

Jessica Alba

Clive Owen

Nick Stahl

Powers Boothe

Rutger Hauer

Elijah Wood

Rosario Dawson

Benicio Del Toro

Jaime King

Devon Aoki

Brittany Murphy

Carla Gugino

Alexis Bledel

Michael Clarke Duncan

Directors: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino

Score: 0

The Review: Guy Noir this ain't.

Very dark, both in lighting and in mood, Sin City comprises three (or is it four?) separate but slightly interpenetrating vignettes in the classic noir style as filtered through the graphic (and I don't mean particularly artistic) vision of Frank Miller. In the words of one of Anthony Burgess' Clockwork Orange characters, this is a bit of the ultra-violent, my droogy droogs. Intensely so!

The location is Basin City -- with the "entering city limits" signs so often battered as to give rise to the movie moniker -- a dark, down, gritty, crime-ridden, shadow existence with but a few sparks of integrity (Hartigan, by Willis) or heroics (Marv, by Rourke), but both so extremely brutal as to negate positive affect.

The cinematic design is quite interesting, both visually and chronologically. The most distinctive feature of the cinematic experience is the careful use of monochrome and color, derived from the original stark B&W of the graphic novels. Most of the film is toned monochrome -- not exactly black & white, for there's a constant sepia undertone. Contrasting with this are splotches of color highlights in almost every frame: it may be the red of bloody scratches or lipstick or a gorgeous evening gown, the irises of a person's eyes (a particularly stunning effect), the putrid yellow of a jaundiced skin, the entire dress and figure of an attractive woman, the body color of a car. (The computational power underlying these effects must have been substantial.) These small highlights are used to great effect, intently focusing attention -- which means you should probably make a special effort to look around them when they're present, into the background. The time structure of the separate vignettes is a bit confusing, as if there's a bit of jumping back and forth. There's no obvious cues that I saw that would enable me to easily characterize the time sequence, but don't worry about it. This is not a major problem and it becomes most visible only in the final minutes.

I give high ranks to the cinematic design, which is the only reason this film ranks anywhere close to the neutral range. The over-the-top noir situations and plots could be enjoyable, if there's a redeeming sense of humor (e.g., R.B. Parker's Spenser) or heroism. However, Sin City has little humor and the heroics are bizarre and cloaked in psychological extremes. (But then, so are the psychology and psyches of most comic book heroes, Batman included, so this shouldn't be too surprising.) What is either surprising or disturbing is the depth of ennui engendered while watching the ultra-violence on-screen; I guess I was more burned out than disgusted. This movie is probably worth seeing for its cinematic implementation, but I cannot recommend it.

My prediction is that Austin TX is about to become a mecca, where fans will prowl trying to find where specific scenes were filmed.

(2-Apr-05)

Back to the chronological list of reviews