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'Sin City': Unrelenting violence wears you out

By BOB LONGINO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Sin City" is scuz city, a dark, smelly, gutter-level metropolis of hardened cops, snarling whores and crooked politicians.

People don't just die here. They get filled with lead from smoking guns or their organs get ripped out, maybe even eaten. But, for sure, somebody's going to get beaten to a bloody pulp. And later beaten again and again.

Dimension Films

'Sin City'

C+

The verdict: Interesting to look at — for a while.

Directors: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Elijah Wood, Nick Stahl, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson
Run time: 126 minutes
Release date: April 1, 2005
Rating: R for sustained strong stylized violence, nudity and sexual content including dialogue.
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"Sin City" may be an eyeful — it's a fully rendered, visually intoxicating transfer from page to screen of three separate stories from comics master Frank Miller's ultra-dark, detective-style graphic novels. But it's also the kind of R-rated eye candy that flirts with hard-core film noir, ultra violence and sheer lust. "Sin City's" sinful excess can lead a moviegoer to wonder how the heck this film got out of a ratings board without the dreaded NC-17 strapped around its neck.

The horde of young-adult fans — those who rarely venture into the sun and, rarer still, take a break from their PlayStations or Xboxes — will come to see this film in droves.

They have good reason to. Movies with this singular a vision, this much dedication to film as art, this much determination to literally hand a scantily clad Jessica Alba a rope and let her do her thing on a stripper's stage — well, they just don't come along too often.

Much of the film is an exact recreation of Miller's graphic novels. The art direction is pure film-noir black and white with splashes of vivid red or pus yellow to tweak an emotional intention. The actors — and there are a ton of them — performed in front of blue and green screens so that backgrounds could be computer-generated like in the latter-day, droning "Star Wars" movies and the sunnier "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow."

The film's marketing plan asks whether "Sin City" is the next "Pulp Fiction." Nice ploy. But the answer is simple — no.

Both films venture into some of the same, slick seediness. But while "Pulp" varied its artistic notes, "Sin City" is the same loud, heavy-handed, nihilistic sledgehammer pounded over and over again. It can wear you out and numb you emotionally to what's happening onscreen.

The repetitive violence and lasciviousness make it hard to differentiate one story from the next.

So, too, the gritty — and sometimes trite — dialogue. The opening vignette, featuring a miscast Josh Hartnett and filmed a couple of years ago by co-director Robert Rodriguez to impress Miller and land part of this gig, includes the line, "She shivers like a leaf on a dying tree."

Later on, the writing sinks lower and stays there. Exhibit A: "You've got somebody's love stink all over you."

In one story, stalwart Bruce Willis is a cop trying to protect a little girl from a pedophile who happens to be an influential politician's son. The little girl, of course, eventually grows up into the curvy Alba. The pedophile, played with creepy eagerness by Nick Stahl, eventually morphs into a revolting blob of yellow flesh.

The second story sends super-ugly Mickey Rourke on the hunt after his newfound girlfriend — a beautiful prostitute, natch — is murdered. And the third pits strong-willed Clive Owen and a gang of ornery, gunslinging prostitutes led by Rosario Dawson against nasty-boy Benicio Del Toro.

Recognizable faces are everywhere: Elijah Wood, Carla Gugino, Brittany Murphy, Michael Madsen, Michael Clarke Duncan. If anything, "Sin City" is a definitive B-list smorgasbord.

With their gravelly voices and unabashed adventurousness, Rourke and Del Toro, who both sport prosthetics to more closely resemble Miller's characters from the graphic novels, emerge as the glue that makes "Sin City" work. Wood helps, too. But none is in the movie long enough.

What we get is a preponderance of sameness. A movie with one vibe that oversells itself and, eventually, overstays its welcome.