Sin City
Five stars. This is an all-time great.
Noir doesn't get any blacker than this, nor any better. Sin City is a series of four stories, linked by a few common characters, and by the seedy location of Sin City itself. The stories cover revenge, justice, and the struggle of the downtrodden at their most basic and brutal. Life is cheap, violence is ubiquitous, but the good guys (or at least, the less bad guys) still fight for the ones they love. Told in an arresting, partially colourised, high-constrast black-and-white visual style with voice-over narration, it really is a film that has to be seen to be believed.
Comments
Richard Brunton
Sun Jun.12.2005 11:08
Seriously black & white tinted glasses Martin. What of the cheese fest performances from Michael Madsen and Clive Owen? That whole "get me a car with a big trunk" speech is still sticking in my throat, awful.
There are a lot of poor things about this movie, which are shadowing by it's stylish gimmick, hardly top marks at all.
It's good, it's new and it's very true to the books, but not a great movie. Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis were unstoppable and a feast to watch though.
Sin City 2 will be interesting, they will have to concentrate on story and acting.
martin
Wed Jun.15.2005 21:53
I agree that the acting was less than award-winning, but I do think that treating the visual style as mere icing on the cake is a mistake here. The exaggerated black-and-white visuals need a simple, black and white story to go with them; layering that style over a more subtle plot would be too intrusive. Likewise, telling this same story by means of more traditional cinematography would rob it of its brutal impact.
For me, the story, and the rock-like performances from the main characters existed in perfect symbiosis with the stark visuals, and together produced one of the most memorable films I've seen this year. I'm not backing down from the five stars :-)