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Sin City [2005]


RRP: £19.99
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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

Brutal and breathtaking, Sin City is Robert Rodriguez's stunningly realized vision of Frank Miller's pulpy comic books. In the first of three separate but loosely related stories, Marv (Mickey Rourke in heavy makeup) tries to track down the killers of a woman who ended up dead in his bed. In the second story, Dwight's (Clive Owen) attempt to defend a woman from a brutal abuser goes horribly wrong, and threatens to destroy the uneasy truce among the police, the mob, and the women of Old Town. Finally, an aging cop on his last day on the job (Bruce Willis) rescues a young girl from a kidnapper, but is himself thrown in jail. Years later, he has a chance to save her again.

Based on three of Miller's immensely popular and immensely gritty books (The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill, and That Yellow Bastard), Sin City is unquestionably the most faithful comic-book-based movie ever made. Each shot looks like a panel from its source material, and director Rodriguez (who refers to it as a "translation" rather than an adaptation) resigned from the Directors Guild so that Miller could share a directing credit. Like the books, it's almost entirely in stark black and white with some occasional bursts of color (a woman's red lips, a villain's yellow face). The backgrounds are entirely digitally generated, yet not self-consciously so, and perfectly capture Miller's gritty cityscape. And though most of Miller's copious nudity is absent, the violence is unrelentingly present. That may be the biggest obstacle to viewers who aren't already fans of the books and who may have been turned off by Kill Bill (whose director, Quentin Tarantino, helmed one scene of Sin City). In addition, it's a bleak, desperate world in which the heroes are killers, corruption rules, and the women are almost all prostitutes or strippers. But Miller's stories are riveting, and the huge cast--which also includes Jessica Alba, Jaime King, Brittany Murphy, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro, Elijah Wood, Nick Stahl, Michael Clarke Duncan, Devin Aoki, Carla Gugino, and Josh Hartnett--is just about perfect. (Only Bruce Willis and Michael Madsen, while very well-suited to their roles, seem hard to separate from their established screen personas.) In what Rodriguez hopes is the first of a series, Sin City is a spectacular achievement. --David Horiuchi, Amazon.com


I wish I'd given it a miss
Review date: 2008-11-19 Rating: 4 out of 10

I must be missing something fantastic here because this film had the total opposite effect on me that it seemed to on everone else. I hated it! I found the tone extremely dull and the story was even weaker! What are other people seeing that I don't? I'll be honest, I hadn't read any of the comics that this film was based on which is a shame because they may have discouraged me from watching the film and saved me a couple of hours! The only credible thing i picked up on was the good cast, Elijah Wood being surprisngly scary!

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Reviews


Ka-pow classic
Review date: 2008-10-30 Rating: 10 out of 10

I wasn't sure what to expect considering I hadn't read the comics. I was impressed. This is a superb addition to the film noir tradition. It's modern take on the Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe story. Yes, it is violent and yes it's sexist in terms of interpretation of women, but it's accurate translation of what you see in the comic books. I think it works well as a mix of animation and live action, better than 300. If it was fully animated or full live action then the film would have ended up being a pastiche. As it is, the casting, especially of Bruce Willis, Clive Owen and Mickey Rourke among the men is great. Some of the women are good too.

If you can accept the violence, I would thoroughly recommend it.

FASCINATING
Review date: 2008-07-14 Rating: 8 out of 10

Wow! What a tour-de-force! Very stylistic and very well done! An excellent comic book adaption that couldn't have been made any better. Easily Rodriguez' best film so far.

enjoyable comic book fluff
Review date: 2008-06-06 Rating: 6 out of 10

return to form for robert rodreiguez after the awful spy kids trilogy and the even worser once upon a time in mexico,this also offers a return to form for mickey roark who shines in this movie.

Gloriously grim, but not perfect.
Review date: 2008-04-26 Rating: 8 out of 10

This film has its problems, but it has some pretty brilliant aspects too...

The mix of eras in the styles (sometimes seems like a contemporary setting, sometimes dystopian future, all mixed with a 50's feel) help give this film a timeless quality. Show it in 40 years time and it won't have dated.

The men are all tough-guys, and the women are mainly prostitutes - but they aren't subservient. It's the women where the power ultimately lies.

The film looks great with the digitally created backgrounds. It's not as visually impressive as `Casshern' (where all the backgrounds were created digitally) but it isn't meant to be - the backgrounds are bleak and gritty, they portray the depression of a City gone to social ruin.

A lot of work has gone into giving the characters depth. The narrative is straight from them, we are able to see the city through their eyes, we hear their thoughts, we begin to understand their philosophy. This really worked for Hartigan (Bruce Willis), his story was compelling and poignant. But for the others - they were interesting to watch, but I felt little for the characters involved.

In a nutshell: the interweaving of several stories a-la `Pulp Fiction' isn't as seamless as it could be, it feels a bit disjointed but it does show how everyone is caught up in the web of corruption which binds the city together. The message and the direction are handled well; overly stylistic films can sometimes flop - but in this case it works, and is perhaps the only way to pull off a translation from graphic novel to film. I can't help but think that the film took too much on, although it looks fantastic on screen - I couldn't absorb myself in all the stories. The characters involved seemed too shallow to really care about.

I'd give this 3.5 stars, but I can't. I'm dithering between 3 and 4 stars, but the creative energy which has gone into this film has tipped the balance to a four.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Mickey Rourke
Jessica Alba
Bruce Willis

Creators:
Bruce Willis (Primary Contributor)
Mickey Rourke (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: Buena Vista Home Entertainment
EAN: 8717418047931
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Black & White, Colour, Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen,
Release date: 2005-09-26
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 119 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2005
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: Italian (Subtitled)
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: Italian (Dubbed)

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