Sin City
Keep in mind that this review comes from a gal who laughed giddily through all of 2004’s zombie movies and who doesn’t blink during Terminator or Saving Private Ryan or Desperado. I’m no doily-crocheting pastor’s wife with an agenda and a Hayes Code sampler on the wall. This movie is obscene. Not as obscene as Passion of the Christ, but I have the same desire to do all I can to forget I ever saw it. After we walked out, we felt just awful. Moments were terribly boring, others were terribly cold and ugly. Even with all the dazzling, groundbreaking visual work, which I will not deny was great to look at, the movie itself left me cold and even a little resentful.
It may be a film co-directed by Robert Rodriguez (at a cost of his DGA license) and (graphic novel artist) Frank Miller, and only “special guest-directed by Quentin Tarantino,” but this is a Tarantino film. I use that label as its own, new genre, for which there is no label yet because until now, actual films directed by Quentin were alone in this label. Hallmarks of this new crazy-cool genre include hyperbolic homage to a previously serious (to itself) genre, especially including dialogue and action that would be beyond laughable if it weren’t presented so tongue in cheek. It should also be visually very sexy and different. Tarantino genre films tend to be grouped for me as hyperstylish and ultraviolent miasmas born of a Clockwork Orange and artsy kung fu pictures.
I won’t deny that the visual capture of Miller’s groovy-looking graphic novel is spot on (though I would have done without the interruptions of color). Somehow, taking his subject matter rendered Epic and even romantic by evocative still ink drawings and making them live action takes the art away and leaves me feeling queasy, even though the style never got old or dull to look at even after a mind-numbing 126 minutes.
The movie left me (and my companion) colder than cold, colder even than the Kill Bills did. Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Sin City - all incredibly violent, over the top, cold, detached, and steeped in a particularly American brand of cruelty. What’s worse than just insane crazy violence is insane crazy violence that you are forced to drop your empathy to watch, and that you are encouraged to laugh at and enjoy, as if it were a circus act. It’s a terrible thing to ask an audience to do for one scene, never mind however many were in this movie. Even more so than with the Kill Bills, the over-the topness of this movie isn’t particularly fun or gleeful, and it lacks the pseudo-glamour by going for pure grit. The tongue in your cheek cuts like a knife, leaving nothing but a raw wound.
Rodriguez populates Miller’s black and white world with woman-hating sociopaths (and Bruce Willis) - even the women hate themselves. They are all vessels, hookers, strippers, or just gratuitously nude victims-waiting-to-happen, all with a past that somehow is supposed to justify their inevitable ugly ends. No woman is safe (the only person remotely not dangerous is of course locked away for the better part of a decade), but here all women are shallow, gorgeous temptresses, vulnerable and/or deadly with nothing to offer, except maybe a ruthlessly efficient death.
It’s a scary, ugly world, with people hurting each other as a matter of course, like one might be casually rude to a stranger on the street, these folks would stick a shiv in your throat and hold your gaze as you sink into oblivion.
It’s not just the impersonal, detached violence of a war movie or drive-by shooting, it’s the far more unsettling, up close, personal, purposeful hands-on violence of rape, cannibalism, pedophilia, dismemberment, torture. It takes so much more cruelty, so much more distance from humanity to do what all these characters do (even the “good” guys) that the experience in total was a stomach-churning exercise in waiting for it to be over. To be so far removed from empathy to try and make a mockery of it, well, the mind boggles.
When the ugliness is finally over, the movie drags, plods, it’s really long. I was surprised that it wasn’t more like 2 hrs and 45 minutes. The times that I wasn’t cringing in terror, I definitely felt clear-cut moments of “are you bored too?” I could entertain myself trying to dissect how they achieved a certain look in a scene (rainwater, lighting, stuff like that) but that only went so far.
The story bracketing was interesting and recalled Pulp Fiction, but the sheer gratuitousness of the action took away some of the structural elegance. The design is fantastic and very true to the stark ink, high contrast original work, with great timelessness of clothing and vehicles and sets. It all felt really real and I was surprised to discover how much was CGI added in. Take away the fancy razzle dazzle and you’re stuck with a sour, rotting tale about ugly-souled people brutalizing other in a clunky, hammy gorefest. Mmm sign me up.
I would actually be concerned if someone found this movie to be totally awesome (besides design-wise) - it feels like something only a real trenchcoat mafia misfit could derive any real pleasure from. Instead I was just filled with generalized dread. Have fun.
MPAA Rating R-sustained strong violence, sexuality, nudity, language
Release date 4/1/05
Time in minutes 126
Director R-sustained strong violence, sexuality, nudity, language
Studio Dimension Films
