rating:
(out of
4 stars)United States; 2005
Directed by Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller & Quentin Tarantino; produced by Elizabeth Avellán; written by Frank Miller
Starring Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Josh Hartnett, Jessica Alba, Devon Aoki, Alexis Bledel, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Clarke Duncan, Carla Gugino, Rutger Hauer, Jaime King, Michael Madsen, Brittany Murphy, Nick Stahl, Elijah Wood
Below you will find a temporary review for this film. The real (better, more complete) review will be online very soon.
'Sin City' is bloody brilliant, the best comic book adaptation I have seen.
Based on three of Frank Miller's stories ("The Hard Goodbye", "The Big Fat
Kill" and "That Yellow Bastard") the film tells about a cop named Hartigan
(Bruce Willis) who saves a girl from a pedophile named Roark (Nick Stahl),
who will turn into the Yellow Bastard. The girl is Nancy (Jessica Alba) who
becomes a dancer in a club where we meet Marv (Mickey Rourke) who has the
night of his life with Goldie (Jamie King). She is found dead the next
morning and Marv swears he will get the people responsible. His search leads
him to a boy named Kevin (Elijah Wood) and relatives of pedophile Roark
including Cardinal Roark (Rutger Hauer) and Senator Roark (Powers Boothe).
Also working in the same club as Nancy is Shellie (Brittany Murphy), who
starts the story about Dwight (Clive Owen) and his problems with Jackie Boy
(Benicio Del Toro) and hookers including Gail (Rosario Dawson), Miho (Devon
Aoki) and Becky (Alexis Bledel).
All this must sound quite confusing, but directors Robert Rodriguez and
Frank Miller perfectly fit these stories into a whole, told in a way Quentin
Tarantino would do it. But 'Sin City' is not really about its story, it is
about the characters who inhabit the world we see and about its perfect
visual style. Rodriguez films in front of a green screen, making the film
entirely digital with a perfect result. He keeps most of what we see in
black and white, except for blood, eyes, lipstick, blonde hair, red shoes
and of course the Yellow Bastard. I admired 'Sky Captain and the World of
Tomorrow' which used the same technique, 'Sin City' does it even better.
This is a visually stunning film, as exciting as it is bloody. There is
never a dull moment, the three main stories are all equally interesting.
There is more voice over than there is dialog and it works for the film noir
kind of film 'Sin City' is. I thought 'Spider-Man 2' was as good as a comic
book adaptation could be, catching the essence of single pictures and a
complete story from a comic. 'Sin City' is like watching a comic book that
happens to move the entire time. It is hard to do it better than this.