Film Review: Sin City

So there I was in the fall of '05, scoping out the DVD rentals at the old shoppette, looking for the next big thrill.  I just happen to look up at the TV hanging on the ceiling to see them playing one of the new releases like they always do; I see Jackie boy and his gang getting cut up by deadly little Miho, spewing white blood everywhere.  Don't know how these creeps get away with playing that stuff for all the public to see, kids and all, but it hit me from that moment onward that Sin City must be a hell of a show.

The film is literally black, white, and red all over:  a smooth and breezy combo of extreme style and extreme violence.  It's got all the works:  car chases, shootouts, fist fights, knife fights, dancing ladies, and more.  Everybody here has a score to settle, and they leave body trails miles long.  There's so much blood, it's ridiculous.  The sheer brutality makes it all a real whopper too.  As much of a looker as the movie is, and with all its moxie, it's the stuff that comic book dreams are made of.

This picture takes after four of Frank Miller's original stories.  The Customer Is Always Right is a short segment (originally test footage) that sets the tone at the beginning, and rounds things off at the end.  The Hard Goodbye has always been my favorite:  a real hard case about a down-out-of-his-luck fella avenging a dame's death, and the resulting rampage sure is gutsy.  The Big Fat Kill is consistently thrilling doozy of a tale too, showing a guy doing everything it takes to stop war breaking out on the streets.  That Yellow Bastard is split up at the beginning and end, and it is a fairly touching story about a double-crossed cop trying to protect a broad.  All these stories play in the tropes of hard-boiled noir stories we all know and love:  it's a world where cops are rotten, everybody with power is corrupt, criminals are noble anti-heroes, and they're all using brute force to worm their way out of exploitation and to find their own brand of justice.  It's definitely amoral territory, but that's pretty much the point, and the movie handles the goods in all the right ways to make each story hit on all six.

Photography is solid.  Editing has a few choppy parts, but a lot of it is precise and good.  It's especially swell considering that most everything was shot on green-screens, and even the actors had to be spliced in together to make their scenes work.  There are a lot of crazy lighting, coloring, and transition effects, most of which hold up, but there are times when it seems kinda cheap.  The whole movie looks cartoony and processed, but as a moving comic book, it works great.  All the players are ace.  Writing can be blunt and choppy, but it helps the style.  This production has some fine-looking sets, props, costumes.  Most special effects hold up, especially considering that most of the movie is computer-animated.  The music's not bad either.

Booze, babes, guns, cars, tough guys, blood...you find the right alley in Sin City, you can find anything.  Recommended for mature audiences.

If you bag this on home video, you can either see this as one big cut with all the stories cut up precisely, or with each story separate with some good new scenes.  Both ways work great in their own ways.

4.5/5 (Entertainment:  Perfect | Stories:  Very Good | Film:  Good)