FrancisPage

Reel To Reel:
Sin City

How It Rates: ****
Starring: Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson
Rated: R
Red Flags: Graphic Violence, Language, Some Nudity & Sex.

Preconceived Notions: Looks to be the most visually interesting movie since Sky Captain & The World Of Tomorrow.
The Bottom Line: A gritty, dark-humored comic book come to life. Now lets hope it gets the props it deserves.

When Dick Tracy hit the screen in 1990, it grasped the look and feel of the comic right down to the primary colors. Leech out most of the color, add a Pulp Fiction-style format and film noir and you have arrived in Sin City, the movie adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novels. Notice I didn't say "comic books."

Maverick director Robert Rodriguez, who cuts what he shoots, put his Avids into overdrive to create this superb work of film art. Quentin Tarantino directed one portion. It is beautifully dark, and darkly witty. Spashes of color draw our attention every now and then, but most of the film is shaded and composed in black-and-white, like the frames of Miller's work... sometimes in simple silhouette. It submerges us in an urban wasteland where everybody is either smoking, hooking or killing. Mostly killing.

Sin City is composed of three different stories of murder and revenge over the course of two hours. Describing their plots would rob you of this film's most rewarding experience, which is meeting a series of decadent characters whose lives unfold before you. I'll just say a lot of people end up dead, some in ways more creative and disgusting than others. This film is a hair shy of NC-17, and the only reason it dodged that rating is the artful dodging of the most graphic scenes.

The principal players narrate their stories as if they're writing thought balloons above their heads, the words crackling with black wit. Killing people is second nature to them, no more antagonizing than swatting a few flies. A good day in Sin City is when 50 people are murdered instead of 100. Most interestingly, for all the bodies that ought to be piling up around town you see no hint of a cemetery.

Sin City is just as visually striking and innovative, if not more, than last year's Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow. However, the latter film got nary or no awards nods. A similar fate for this film would be a travesty, although I fear it's likely given the awards' shows propensity for ignoring the first six months of the year.