Tonight we saw "Sin City" with Dave. Good lordy. There was a moment in the beginning where I thought to myself, "Gosh, this is so visually interesting. I wish I were loaded." However, now I'm thankful that I was totally sober, or else I would have been scarred for life. When the credits started to roll, I felt tense and icky and in need of both a shower and a stiff drink. And thankful that the damn movie was finally over.
Okay, how do I describe this movie? Well, think a graphic novel in noir style with separate but overlapping story lines filmed in black and white with surreal splashes of primary colors. Think artsy and edgy. Everyone lives in Sin City, where the dames are hard, the guys are harder and the villians are pure evil. (Some are even yellow and Gollum-like.) I've never seen the comic, so I don't know if its true to the narrative. Like I said, visually this movie doesn't compare to anything else out there. Actors are sometimes reduced to outlines, or big blocks of color, and that helps to make the violence less painful. But it's still disturbing and horrific, the way that Lucy Liu's animation section during Kill Bill haunts me years later. Perhaps if you smooshed together Pulp Fiction, Resevoir Dogs, The Passion (gorefestival extraordinaire), Aeon Flux, Desperado and Hellboy, you could start to imagine what "Sin City" was like.
Would I see it again? Hmmm, I don't know. While there were some zingers in there that made me laugh, I can't stand watching girls get beat up and then being turned on, or some child molester/murderer get his face turned into splashy hamburger, or at least five scenes where someone gets a pail of blood splattered all over their cold expressionless face, or the uber-explotation underneath some macho narrator on a killing spree. I'm too squishy for Sin City. I wouldn't last a day. (Besides, I don't think I could squeeze my ass into a strappy thongy leather bondage get-up that all the ladies seem to wear.)