“Sin City” is a guilty pleasure. In fact, itʼs such a guilty pleasure that it should be a crime to enjoy this movie. Not a felony, but at least a misdemeanor. This is because while this movie is artful and about as cool as a film can be, itʼs also one of the most savage, violent and extreme movies ever made. People are shot full of bullets, stabbed, shot again, hit in the head with an axe, riddled with bullets some more, eaten by wolves, eaten by people, shot (the amount of shooting can not be stressed enough) and simply beaten into a lifeless bloody pulp. The point of listing all these atrocities is not to gross out or entice the psychotic. Itʼs just that with something this extreme, the viewer should know what theyʼre getting themselves into. This isnʼt a bad movie: it just has no morals.
Not that someone should condemn “Sin City” based solely on that point. There are many redeeming features that make this a film worth seeing. The entire thing looks and feels like a graphic novel. The coloring is artful, with only occasional eyecatching swatches of red or yellow that make certain characters stand out. Constant voiceovers from the main characters could have been taken straight out of the “Sin City” books, to the point where they would sound corny in a more realistic setting. And despite all the blood, it seems that many of the characters are incredibly hard to kill, taking bullet after bullet without dying. Overall, itʼs a graphic novel crossed with a grim noir detective story of the 1940s. Afterwards, you may want to go out and buy a trench coat because they look so cool on every character in the movie.
Overall, though, anyone considering seeing this picture has to remember that itʼs based off of a graphic novel, not a comicbook. Thereʼs a serious difference,because while Spidermanlives in a city of good, with onlythe occasional villain to liventhings up, “Sin City” is rotten to the core: even the protagonists are killers and sociopaths. The violence isnʼt cleaned up. Everything is placed out on the table, and while the tortures and killings are unrealistic, itʼs unreal in the sense that you may want to throw up or shout, “Oh my God, how can they show that!” The movie follows this approach down to the letter. So go see it and enjoy it, but donʼt say you werenʼt warned.