CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Review of Sin City

Friday, June 03, 2005

this entry brought to you by weezer, "beverly hills"


Yes, Sin City is a comic book movie, and yes, I'm a fan of comic books. Yes, I've known about Sin City from back in the early 90's, when many of the most popular comic book writers and artists at the time (in this case, Frank Miller, who got famous for his work on Daredevil and The Dark Knight Returns), left the major publishers (Marvel and DC, respectively) to do their own projects, which they would own and do with as they liked. I've only read two Sin City stories, "Silent Night", a single issue one-shot with almost no words, and "To Hell and Back", a book that has nothing to do with the movie, and which, incidentally, I only got around to buying two years ago. To be honest, I wasn't sure what I thought of them. The look of Sin City was compelling and certainly it was manically paced, but I never knew what I thought of it.

And this was the exact feeling I got watching the movie initially. Visually, it is the comic book, practically without any variation. There is usually no color on screen, only black and white, and even shades of grey is almost non existent. As in the comic book, color is used in specific instances for dramatic impact: a dress is in brilliant crimson; a pair of eyes flash a sparkling emerald; That Yellow Bastard a sulfuric, penetrating yellow, etc. And during the film's few warm moments, a subdued, nearly sepia flesh tone creeps out.

But the movie is so much like the comic book that what was off putting about the book is off putting here: manic pacing, character dialogue that bordered on melodramatic; absurd amount of gut-wrenching, graphic violence. For the opening reel of the film, I kept trying to wrap my head around that, not sitting comfortable, analyzing everything. I kept thinking, this is like soap-opera melodrama... this is so much like those old noir detective/ crime movie serials back in the old days.

I felt like slapping my forehead after about 15 minutes in when I realized that I'd been so busy analyzing I'd failed to realize I was on the edge of my seat, unflinchingly staring at the screen. Like a crime serial? That was the fricking point.

Sin City, in all of its melodrama, gritty voices, cold stares, double crosses, and extra gritty voices, is the most gleeful worship of pulp crime-- even moreso than even anything Tarantino has done-- that it's amazing the comic book didn't use the name "Pulp Fiction" first, seeing as how it debuted a few years before that movie. It doesn't so much pay homage by reinventing it like Pulp Fiction did to crime fiction, it completely resurrects the noir genre, dresses it up in a bleaker, more violent coat than before to make it relevent to today, because if the directors back then could have gotten away with Sin City's violence, you bet your ass they would have.

I don't really like the term "guy movie" in reference to anything other than brain-dead, sweaty movies with no plot, no character, and too many explosions. This is not one of those movies, but, like those hard-boiled detective stories where the dame is always mysterious and dangerous and the guy is always willing to die for her, it is most definitely a guy movie. It's almost a celebration of masculinity, without the sacrifice of what matters most in a movie: plot, character development, intrigue.

I wouldn't agree with you, but I wouldn't be surprised if you said you didn't like Sin City, but it's a movie you must see. Unlike a lot of dreck dripping out of Hollywood today, it's bold cinema.
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with love from CRS @ 5:27 PM 

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