Film Review: Sin City

Director: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino

Based on the comic book series by Frank Miller, it took a lot of persuasion from Robert Rodriguez and even a test scene (the opening scene) to convince him that his version was a "translation, not an adaptation". Miller was initially skeptical after negative experiences with RoboCop but agreed after seeing the proof of concept scene. This initial scene was then used to help recruit other big names to the project like Bruce Willis, Elijah Wood and Benicio del Toro.

Marv (Mickey Rourke)

The film follows three distinct stories that happen in the same city which are book-ended with a prologue and epilogue. All three stories deal with the shady underworld in this urban sprawl and features people operating outside the law to get what they want, including the policemen themselves. The film employed the Sony HDC-950 high-definition digital camera, having the actors work in front of a green screen, that allowed for the artificial backgrounds (as well as some major foreground elements, such as cars) to be added later during the post-production stage. Shooting started before all the actors had signed on to the movie so in some scenes stand-ins were used.

At first its hard to get over the effects used to shoot this movie, its an absolute triumph of visual beauty with its stark contrasting black and greys against white with the occasional use of colour for emphasis. It was a bold but ultimately impressive decision as it makes it a completely unique work. But this aside I was incredibly disappointed with this movie, its reputation proceeded it and visual beauty aside it offered so little. Clive Owen displayed why he doesn't get offered big roles anymore with an incredibly hammy performance and Bruce Willis is as wooden and unconvincing as he has been in most of his recent roles. Only Mickey Rourke offers a lead role in one of the stories that has anything likable about it.

Kevin (Elijah Wood) showing the monochrome shooting style to its fullest

The stories themselves were uninteresting and generally left you following characters you had little feeling or affection for, with nobody to root for it leaves you feeling like a bystander without any interest in which way the plot turns. Many of the set-pieces were just setup to see rich red blood splatter against the black and white background for visual effect. Possibly ditching the middle story "The Big Fat Kill" which Tarantino directed might have given more time for character development and an improved plot to the other two stories. But even then I'd still have had Bruce Willis constant narration for nearly an hour which almost made me want to watch the movie on mute.

1.5/4 Beautiful but unintelligent dull plot