'Sin City' gets Four Stars

[Kire]

Sin City

BY ROGER EBERT / March 30, 2005

If film noir was not a genre, but a hard man on mean streets with a lost lovely in his heart and a gat in his gut, his nightmares would look like "Sin City." The new movie by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller plays like a convention at the movie museum in Quentin Tarantino's subconscious. A-list action stars rub shoulders with snaky villains and sexy wenches, in a city where the streets are always wet, the cars are ragtops and everybody smokes. It's a black-and-white world, except for blood, which is red, eyes which are green, hair which is blond, and the Yellow Bastard.

This isn't an adaptation of a comic book, it's like a comic book brought to life and pumped with steroids. It contains characters who occupy stories, but to describe the characters and summarize the stories would be like replacing the weather with a weather map.

The movie is not about narrative but about style. It internalizes the harsh world of the Frank Miller "Sin City" comic books and processes it through computer effects, grotesque makeup, lurid costumes and dialogue that chops at the language of noir. The actors are mined for the archetypes they contain; Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro, Clive Owen and the others are rotated into a hyperdimension. We get not so much their presence as their essence; the movie is not about what the characters say or what they do, but about who they are in our wildest dreams.

On the movie's Web site, there's a slide show juxtaposing the original drawings of Frank Miller with the actors playing the characters, and then with the actors transported by effects into the visual world of graphic novels. Some of the stills from the film look so much like frames of the comic book as to make no difference. And there's a narration that plays like the captions at the top of the frame, setting the stage and expressing a stark existential world view.

More: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050330/REVIEWS/50322001

[Kire]

1. Harry Knowles Gushes

"We have a new cool standard."

SIN CITY
review

SIN CITY is a cinematic blowtorch to the senses, burning, exposing and finally annihilating each new noir drenched nerve-ending into another thrilling, ecstatic sensation. From the second Marley Shelton starts to quiver in Josh Hartnett’s arms till the closing of the elevator doors – this movie is a vice holding your head in place – daring you to watch it through the gaps of your fingers – leaving you laughing the naughty laugh at each new delicious sin, like a box of chocolate strawberries shared between lovers – you in your seat and Robert, Frank and the actors and artists on the screen – each celebrating the unmitigated joy of getting away with it, honoring it and bringing it to life. SIN CITY throbs to life with the roar of engines, gunfire, rage, women and men. It’s primal – it’s murderous and it’s vital.

This is completely unlike anything you’ve seen in theaters. It’s the greatest ShockSuspense Story ever told… Each panel stripped down and saturated. This isn’t reality, this isn’t down the corner. The dialogue isn’t realistic, it’s just the way it oughta be. SIN CITY is populated with the subconscious “id”-heroes of Pulp. This is the umpteenth vision of a Meyer-esque dystopian paradise of decaying grandeur and decadence. The characters spout - no erupt with the sort of high living and dying dialogue that gods speak before killing and fucking. You know – the gods that played on silver screens before we started aching to see our own pathetic excuses for lives up there instead. No self-referential post-modern flair… this… this is filled with dialogue for Cagney, Bogie and Edward G. And Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis and Clive Owen relish every line.

Yes, it is Frank Miller’s SIN CITY. Yes, it is essentially every panel brought to life, but in that. In that bringing it to life, it metamorphosizes into something even greater than the comic. Miller’s greatest heroes are thanked in the end credits of the films… folks like Wally Wood and Will Eisner. Johnny Craig and William Gaines. But there’s a fusion here. When this stuff comes to life, it begins to bring on elements from cinematic memory, like that of Shigehiro Ozawa’s GEKITOTSU! SATSUJIN KEN mixed with Robert Aldrich’s KISS ME DEADLY and Edgar Ulmer’s DETOUR, the glorious surreality of Edward Dmytryk’s MURDER, MY SWEET and diced with the utter cinematic gleeful insanity of Kinji Fukasaku’s YAKUZA PAPERS series and BATTLE ROYALE – with the stylish verve of Miike’s ICHII THE KILLER and the raw sensuality and base depravity of DePalma’s BODY DOUBLE & FEMME FATALE & DRESSED TO KILL & SCARFACE. Sure there’s the crazed pulp roots steeped in the pages of Mickey Spillane, Robert E Howard, Jim Thompson, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. But then there’s Marv… and for me… Marv comes from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ THE MUCKER – all the way back in 1914. SIN CITY is the results of all of this and more. It’s everything that made Robert and Frank’s dicks hard since they discovered it tented in their laps. Every woman that made them lust, every sin they ever thought. This is the culmination of dreaming the big dirty dreams about dicks and dames with all the dead dorks they leave pushing posies in their destructive wake.

Do I love the film?

Mor: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=19700

[Kire]

2. Rolling Stone gives 3 1/2 *'s

The worst thing I can say about this savage, sexy and ferociously funny screen translation of three stories from Frank Miller's Sin City series of graphic novels is that it's too much of a good thing. Your eyes go boing so early that the effect wears off. But stick with it. As opposed to the arty and enervated Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which also filmed actors against computer-generated backgrounds, Sin City has a restless bug-fuck vitality. It'll be way too much for Bush America, which is the best thing I can say about it.

More: http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/_/id/6824548?pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=double1&rnd=1112320264179&has-player=true&version=6.0.11.847

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. Saw it last night.

It kicked ass. Closest thing to the books coming alive I've seen with ANY comic-to-film adaptation.