Sin City is the shit!

[Latte Thunder]

It's always tough being a writer or a director making a movie based on a book or a comic. What works on screen and what only works on the page? Every time they do it, they take lierties with the source material that inevitably pisses off fans of the original material. Robert Rodriguez has broken this Hollywood bad habit with Sin City. This new movie is THE most faithful adaptation of a comic book I've ever seen. It is shot for shot, word for word, exactly like the comics, of which I am a huge fan.

Frank Miller is a fucking genius. He single handedly (okay, not exactly, Alan Moore helped out enormously around the same time) turned the comic medium on its head and took it in an entirely new direction. He took one of the world's most recognizable franchises (Batman) and changed it from the Adam West image into the Dark Knight. Everything he touches (except for the Robocop sequels) turns into gold. The man is a legend and his masterpiece is the Dark Horse line of Sin City comics. Nothing else he's done comes close to their perfection. The writing is dark and very Raymond Chandler, the art is ground breaking and experimental. Black and white was nothing new to comics at the time but Miller did black and white like no one else. This was completely different and most importantly, it worked.

This brings us to Rodriguez. When I'd heard the news that he was making Sin City, I didn't believe it. Not possible. Not that comic. There isn't anyone on earth who could do that one. Well he did and he did it very, very well. Every bit of the comic is reproduced here perfectly. Every second of the movie looks and feels exactly like Miller's art and writing (he's given directorial credit, but I don't know what his exact contribution to the movie is, though).

The basic premise is that it's three of Sin City's story arcs, each one running roughly six issues (about 180 pages each), book ended by two three or four page shorts featuring an assassin named the salesman. The movie segues from The Customer Is Always Right into the fourth arc of the Sin City continuity, That Yellow Bastard featuring Bruce Willis as Hartigan, a cop framed for the rape of 11 year old Nancy Callahan (played by Jessica Alba). Hartigan, actually rescues her from the pedophiliac son of Senator Roark. Hartigan spends eight years in prison while Nancy carries a torch from him. Then it segues to The Hard Goodbye featuring Mickey Rourke as Marv, a slab of a man out to avenge the murder of the only woman who ever loved him, a hooker named Goldie, murdered by super-psycho Kevin played perfectly by Elijah Wood. Following this is Clive Owen as Dwight in The Big Fat Kill, a story about the hookers of Old Town keeping a lid on the murder of a cop (one of the best characters in the movie, played by Benicio Del Toro) that could blow their truce with the cops to hell.

Make no mistake, this movie is action city. The characters are extremely cool even when the acting is a little over the top and hammy and the violence is unrelenting. The violence is a point worth mentioning as well as it is extremely graphic. The death of the Yellow Bastard from the Hartigan portion of the story is particularly vicious.

Though, I am gushing now, I'm not even remotely giving you a clear illustration of my elation with this movie. It is the perfect comic book movie. See it now, bitches!

[Jenzy]

Saw it on Wednesday. . .fucking badass!!

[Kimberly]

The movie was unlike anything I've ever seen...

I enjoyed this one alot...

[shawn]

I couldn't get into this for some strange reason. Visually it was a masterpiece, the sound, the look, the feel, the violence, it was all bad ass. But I just found the stories boring as fuck and the dialogue annoying. I could care less about anyone or anything in the movie. I actually felt my brain dripping out of my ear... One of those movies where I actually started looking at my watch praying it would all end... Okay, now everyone jump on me...

"people who read comics stink... People stink because they read comics"
-Ed Long.

[Kimberly]

I couldn't get into this for some strange reason. Visually it was a masterpiece, the sound, the look, the feel, the violence, it was all bad ass. But I just found the stories boring as fuck and the dialogue annoying. I could care less about anyone or anything in the movie. I actually felt my brain dripping out of my ear... One of those movies where I actually started looking at my watch praying it would all end... Okay, now everyone jump on me...

"people who read comics stink... People stink because they read comics"
-Ed Long.

Actually my husband kinda felt like you did Shawn... I kept seeing him out of the corner of my eye checking his watch like every 5 min. He couldn't get into the voiceover... but appreciated the look, feel, etc...

I thought the character of Marvin was just great... I totally got into that storyline...

[kay]

kickass movie!!!

Loved it. The black and white with some color (probably has a name but I don't know it) made it so much more dramatic.

yep, fantastic movie.

[dying to see]

nah listen it was a great movie CEPT.... DUDE, THE GUYS NUTS WERE RIPPED OUT!!! AND YOU SAW THE SHIT TEARING APART AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THATS SICK SICK SICK I DONT CARE WHO YOU ARE... less you're a lesbian, and you HATE penis's and shit... but other then that top notch movie with lots of boobs oooooriiiiiiiite

[Remo D]

Well, I'm a week behind with this one (last Saturday night I was watching Jeff Burr's STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS in San Francisco and drinking with David Hess, but that's another story).

I was quite interested in this film, but then I quickly heard something that reduced my expectations by approximately fifty percent. For all the spot-on faithfulness and accuracy that the film was going to boast? It didn't do much in the credibility department to alter the Nancy character so that she could be played by current hot-stuff Jessica Alba rather than by an actress who was willing to actually play the character as depicted. (And yes, I'm talking nudity, and I don't think it's asking too much that a stripper actually strip.) It's perhaps a minor issue in the movie as a whole, but it DOES detract from the all-important fidelity.

And sure enough, I found Jessica Alba to be the very LEAST interesting thing in the film. (Nothing against the Bruce Willis/Yellow Bastard business--that was all fine by me.)

HOWEVER, I thought that the Clive Owen sequence was terrific, and I also thought that the Mickey Rourke/Carla Gugino/Elijah Wood (OF ALL PEOPLE!!!) sequence was a genre achievement of titanic proportions (sorry, not even the rest of the film put together can completely justify the "it's not a horror film" line after THAT), and I'll be remembering SIN CITY for quite some time to come.

Gotta say it again. ELIJAH FREAKIN' WOOD??!! One of the scariest horror-show villains of the last ten years????

I'm still reeling.

[Lou]

I saw this on saturday. Very cool movie!!

[behindspace]

crazy shit.

[bRRt]

hollywood has put out a real movie that is actually almost worth nine bucks. Fucking loved it!!!

[behindspace]

hollywood has put out a real movie that is actually almost worth nine bucks. Fucking loved it!!!

yeaaaaaaaaaaaah bobby!

we need a joint-viewing!!!

[bRRt]

tee hee hee...you said "joint".

[MuC]

tee hee hee...you said "joint".

hehehehehe...and then you said "joint"...heh...i said it again...




the movie was bad ass...i really liked the way it was done...

[DylanDog]

Finally just got finished watching this and am nowing kicking myself for not going to see it in the theatre. I kept telling myself I would and it played forever at the $2.50 theatre, but somehow I just never could get it done. One thing bothered me a bit. The Senator's son ended up looking a little too Ferengi for my tastes.

[BILE]

Same here,I wish i went to the theater to see it as well.One-of-a-kind movie,it sure stands out in front of all the rest.

[steven_millan]

Finally just got finished watching this and am nowing kicking myself for not going to see it in the theatre. I kept telling myself I would and it played forever at the $2.50 theatre, but somehow I just never could get it done. One thing bothered me a bit. The Senator's son ended up looking a little too Ferengi for my tastes.

Yeah,Yellow Bastard did look a bit too much like a cross between a Ferengi and(more simply)like a Dick Tracy villain,but that was the purpose since it was plainly a genre film,and what a splattery but stylish one it was(it was Rodriguez's personal own "Pulp Fiction",simply put).

Otheriwse,bring on the upcoming "Sin City 2(A Dame To Kill For,complete with a new second tale)" already(I can't wait to see the kickass Marv severely kick more ass)...

And,I sure hope that "GrindHouse" starts filmimg pretty soon(since I'm curious upon what both Rodriguez and Tarantino conjured together from their minds,and which actors,and actresses,will be starring in it[since it's already known that the actors/actresses be in both Rodriguez's and Tarantino's tales,and Danny Trejo will cameo in one of the in'between break "trailers" pieces).

[Latte Thunder]

FYI, the new cut of Sin City is out. It's a two disc set. Disc one has the theatrical cut of the movie, disc two has Rodriguez's new cut of the movie which is each of the thre stories uncut. Also, you can watch each story individually, without the other episodes.

The ten minute film school is now the fifteen minute film school and there's a new cooking segment, too. This disc is packed like crazy. This could pass for a Criterion disc if it didn't say otherwise.