 Movie
Reviews
with Evelyn Gough
Sin City (MA)
Directed by Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller
 "Oh
go on honey, won't you just duck out and fetch me another packet of band aids?
Please?" Carla Gugino as Lucille and Mickey Rourke as Marv in Sin City.
Fans of Frank Miller's graphic novels will be wetting their pants with joy
at this stylish interpretation from director Robert Rodriguez and the author/artist
himself. Based on three of Miller's seven novels, Sin City is as star-studded
as they come with many of Hollywood's heavyweights jumping at the chance to get
sleazy in the crime-infested town of Basin City.
Crooked cops, hookers, paedophiles, cannibals, rapists, vigilantes... every
low-life imaginable (with apologies to any ladies in the horizontal entertainment
industry) gets a look-in in this noir translation which is as faithful an interpretation
as they come. Shot in black and white with the occasional splash of brilliant
colour, Sin City looks fantastic as it follows the fate of a multitude of characters...
Amongst them is the meathead Merv (Mickey Rourke), determined to find the person
who killed the prostitute known as Goldie (Jamie King). Then there's the tough
as nails cop with a dodgy ticker, John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) who saves little
Nancy Callahan (Makenzie Vega) from the clutches of a perverted paedophile (Nick
Stahl). Eight years later Nancy (Jessica Alba) is all grown up, (and boy has she
grown up), and is shaking her booty for a living at a local bar when trouble rears
its extremely ugly yellow head once again.
Then there's Elijah Wood as a cannibalistic Harry Potter look-a-like (or should
that be Frodo look-a-like?), Rutger Hauer as a perverted priest, Rosario Dawson
as a valkyrie street walker, Benicio Del Toro as a corrupt cop, Clive Owen, Brittany
Murphy, Josh Hartnett et al. The impressive list goes on and on.
If you like your films sick, twisted, filled with mutilation, murder, torture
and graphic cruelty, with plenty of near-naked women thrown in for good measure,
then you're in for a treat. Personally, while I can fully appreciate that Rodriguez
and Miller have done a magnificent job at staying authentic to the comics in the
process, Sin City was definitely not my cup of tea. I found it chauvinistic, disturbing
and repulsive, as did my best friend who nearly threw up her choc-top ice cream!
But if you're a fan of Miller's graphic novels or get off watching stomach-churning
violence and naked women, enjoy!
Rating: 
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