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[bryant]

The sterility of the computer-generated backgrounds is as repellent as the archaic gender stereotypes forced upon all the women in Sin City. Soulless excess fueled by unreasonable violence in a fantasy of a world that never should be: pah!

Nah, not really. It fucking rocked. You could get bitchy about how Rodriguez just laid the comic book out on the screen, but nobody gets snotty about faithful adaptations of Shakespeare. It's a high-octane, note-perfect accomplishment. I dunno if I'd call it great cinema, although I think the cinematography and the use of black and white was superb... hm. Maybe I would call it great cinema. It's easy to discount the look of the film and the skilled use of spot color cause it was filmed in digital. That's a mistake. Filming in digital doesn't make beauty easy. Just look at what Photoshop can do in unskilled hands for proof of that.

Really strong acting from most of the leads, with the exception of Jessica Alba, who wasn't terrible. Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, and Mickey Rourke all shone. Each in different ways, too; it wasn't just a bunch of cookie-cutter performances. Clive Owen got to be ultra-competent, Mickey Rourke got to be big and dumb and violent, and Bruce Willis got to be tired. So no, they weren't working against their strengths. Still good performances all around. Rosario Dawson and Jamie King were just as good, too.

Brittany Murphy was awful. She didn't have any sense of the rhythms of the story or of the movie. It's pretty obvious she was supposed to be a lightweight; she went beyond that, though, into being a distraction. She's not in a whole lot of scenes, however. All the other supporting actors were dandy. Particular kudos to Benicio Del Toro, no surprise there, and Rutger Hauer.

You could talk a lot about the gender roles. The women are all sex objects. The men are all inert until motivated by the need to protect/defend/avenge a woman. This short-changes both genders, if you want to be picky about it. Me, I figured I was watching a noir and made mental note that I wouldn't want to be stuck in either gender role.

I was also more interested in the unabashed shotgun wedding between sex and death. Clive Owen and Rosario Dawson do it best, partially because their segment is all about hookers killing people and partially because it's right up Owen's alley: he has that air of violence around him, much like Russell Crowe. (Remember that first scene in L.A. Confidential?) Not to mention they've got Miho riding shotgun behind them, and she's reduced her ability to communicate down to one razor-edged essential technique. It's a very hot movie, and it's the kind of setting where you don't get laid unless you're ready to die.

So there you go. Lots of essential primal urges, lots of violence, lots of velocity. Tons of velocity, in all possible senses of the word. If you're gonna see it, be ready to wallow.

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, Rutger Hauer? I had no idea. As if it couldn't get any better...

[bryant]

Minor role, but a good one.

[jeffwik.livejournal.com]

I had no complaints about Brittany Murphy. Maybe because I find her unrealistically attractive, I dunno, like with Rebecca Pidgeon, could be clouding my judgement.

[felisdemens.livejournal.com]

Yep. Pretty damn fabulous!

[agrimony.livejournal.com]

I really liked the movie, though having not read the comic, I found some of it confusing.

[bneuensc.livejournal.com]

You could talk a lot about the gender roles. The women are all sex objects. The men are all inert until motivated by the need to protect/defend/avenge a woman. This short-changes both genders, if you want to be picky about it. Me, I figured I was watching a noir and made mental note that I wouldn't want to be stuck in either gender role.

That was pretty much my attitude as I watched it, and insofar as I didn't like it, it's a beef I've got with noir as a whole, not with Sin City in particular.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I noted the crappy gender roles when I posted about the film, mostly because the lack of any voiceover narration for any of the women eventually becomes striking. But it's not something I factored into my conception of the quality of the movie, any more than the level of violence, which I also don't approve of in real world terms. It is what it is, I can't necessarily require that the film subvert various staples of its genre. Although I also enjoy opportunities to see movies that do.

[ogier30.livejournal.com]

What's kind of interesting is how Nancy seems to break the rules of the genre, in small ways. She's the good girl who's not so good, the femme fatale who's actually motivated by love. She's the idealized female form, who's willing to step off the pedestal for love. She's motivated by pure motives. She also stands up to That Yellow Bastard's torture, just like Hartigan did, so she's strong in mind and body. And, in the end, she doesn't get what she wants, but she does get what she needs.

SIN CITY is noir cranked up to the nth degree, so I was really fascinated by how Nancy seemed to exist in the cracks of the genre.

[ratmmjess.livejournal.com]

I thought the acting was considerably worse than you did--the line readings sounded very flat to me. And Alba...gawd. She was so wooden that you could have built a rowboat out of her. Murphy was bad, but Alba never even attempted to convey any of the emotional or physical pain her character was supposed to be suffering from.

A fun film, oh yes. Fun enough to overcome the bad acting moments.

[bryant]

I don't think that was bad acting; I think that was intentional reading. Deliberately adopted noir affect, as it were.

You got me reconsidering Alba. Maybe I do think she was worse than Murphy.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

I felt Murphy was worse than Alba primarily because the audience I saw the movie with laughed at Murphy more. Several of her lines got giggles, and you could feel that it took a scene or two to get the audience back into the right frame of mind for the film after that. Because if you're not in the right frame of mind, it really is pretty ridiculous stuff these people are saying. Alba was merely wooden (as always...lord, why do people ever hire her for anything?), which is bad but doesn't derail the film so much.

[bryant]

I was pretty much ready to hate Murphy cause of that abysmal "cut your pecker off" line which was in all the trailers.

[ratmmjess.livejournal.com]

Hmm. My memory of the noirs I've seen is that they didn't have that lack of affect, but given how stylized the rest of the film was I'll have to agree with you. That was my biggest complaint about the film, actually--much too stylized for my liking. But it's a purely personal and subjective complaint--I don't enjoy non-realistic dialogue--and I can't count it as a flaw.

I'm enjoying your film recaps, btw--I've seen most of those, but not in years, and your descriptions are bringing back some fond memories.

[bryant]

Thanks!

And of course, the affect or lack thereof varies. The Big Sleep was hot and full of emotion, simmering right beneath the cool surface. Criss Cross was tres emotive. But I think Sin City's flatness was definitely intentional.

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

The affect of noir aside, the comic book is emotionally flat as a board; it's the sound of slabs of meat slapping together, in every sense, right down to the way Miller uses an inked fingertip to draw shadows in "Hell and Back". Everything I've read so far about the movie suggests that its flaws mirror the flaws of the comic book.

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

I just saw the movie for the second time (not really my idea) and I figured out where Murphy was coming from. Murphy was doing theatrical acting, whereas everyone else was doing movie acting. They're very different. I don't think theatrical technique was the right approach by any means, but she executed it quite competently by its own standards.

Jessica Alba, on the other hand, was one step up from a monotone--she was at the high school drama stage where You've learned inflection? But you can't...think ABOUT it and remember? What your LINES mean and so you just kind OF inflect RANDOMLY!

[flit.livejournal.com]

Brad thought it was awesome how Alexis Bledel's character had a close relationship with her mother. (Shout out to Gilmore Girls!)

I agree that it was pretty flat. I really enjoyed the movie, and I think it was great noir, but it gave me no further incentive to pick up the graphic novel. Back in the days where I was an avid comic reader, I used to pick up a compilation, flip through it, and put it down again. It was visually striking but seemed to lack depth behind the violence.

I loved the use of color and the cinematography.