Movie Review: Sin City

While I'm a fan of Frank Miller, I've never had the opportunity to read his Sin City series. And with it being film noirish, I don't have a real good reason why I haven't yet. So, I settled for the movie, a movie that I can safely say captures the feel of a Frank Miller comic. With inky black and white and some stylistic color, it's hard to tell one of Miller's panels from a cell from this movie.


Most of this credit probably for this falls to director Robert Rodriguez, who has to be a diehard fan of the series. With a large cast of stars ranging from Alexis Bledel to Bruce Willis, the film is cut into three stories, all tough loners with a soft spot for dames. There is some overlap between the three tales but not as much as I was expecting. Willis is a cop framed by a corrupt system; Clive Owen is an ex-con protecing a bunch of gun-totting prostitutes; and Marv's a modern day barbarian out to avenge the death of the only woman he loved. Like I said, film noirish.


Which gets us to the movie's flaws. First of all, Frank Miller likes it nice and gory. This movie is no exception. It's like watching a Quentin Tarantino flick. This may be an incentitive for you, but it was a little too violent for me. How many people really needed to get stabbed in the groin? Was there a real need for serial cannibal Kevin? Also, while voiceover narration is a staple of film noir, it was really done to death in this movie, and many times characters started stating the obvious. And all the "fake" death scenes (when it looked like the end of our hero) started to get predictable after awhile.

In the end, it was an okay movie. I liked watching it, and I didn't. Like after I finished, I had to ask myself "What was the point?" I didn't get really attached to any of the characters and nothing changes at the end of the movie. I guess it just didn't strike a chord with me. C