Movie Review - Sin City

Tania Says:

Again with the comic books (excuse me – graphic novels). Same disclaimer as before.

This movie is pretty cool. I remember seeing this in the theater and thinking that it was ok but nothing extremely special but this is a rare movie where I enjoyed it more the second time. It is a collection of 3 stories that all take place in “Sin City” and they all connect in some way or another. The stories themselves are pretty interesting but the movie itself just looks really cool. Josh told me a lot of the frames were direct pictures taken from the comic and I can totally see that. It is very story-boardy in the way it is shot and it completely works. It is mostly filmed in black and white with spots of color thrown in. So if this movie set out to capture that comic book feel on film for a comic book novice it succeeded but I hardly doubt I was the target audience on this one.

The performances are pretty great overall. Clive Owens is awesome as the dark, brooding guy. Mickey Rourke rules as the creepy looking mean dude out for revenge and Bruce Willis plays Bruce Willis. The female performances are less strong and I don’t just say that because they are in skimpy clothing the entire time (side note – I have heard talk of this movie objectifying women and all that jazz and I don’t buy it. The majority of the women kick serious ass! Those hookers? Watch out.) Then there is Brittany Murphy who invented a whole other world of bad in this movie. I think she was going for this stylistic damsel in distress but she failed. However, Benicio as her thug boyfriend is super good.

This isn’t the type of movie that I think I would typically enjoy but I really did. I get turned off by a lot of violence and blood but this is done in such a cartoony way that it never bothered me and it all made sense in the context of the film. So surprisingly, I liked it!

Josh says:
I enjoyed this movie a lot. I've read slightly more than a handful of comic books and this series is one of them. The movie is very true to the book. At times, I think it hurts the film a bit but for the most part, Rodriguez made some very good choices. Speaking of good choices, here's hoping that this movie helps revive Mickey Rourke's career. He plays a bad ass as good as anyone and every movie needs a good bad ass so I say, "Why not Mickey Rourke?"