Talk about "Sin City" here:
Review by: Breanne Derby
Too Bizarre to Rate
Plot Summary
"Sin City" is a film based off the graphic novels of the "Sin City" series by Frank Miller. The film tells a few different stories about the lives of the people who reside in Sin City, a town so riddled with corruption and crime that it lives up to its name. It's hard to summarize the plot of this film, because there are really three-or-four different plots, all of which take place in Sin City, where all the men are murderers and all the women are prostitutes.
Review
This is the weirdest film I've ever seen. It was so incredibly bizarre that I literally sat in shock for five minutes after leaving the theatre. I simply didn't know how to react. Throughout the film there was no way of expecting what was going to happen; the plots weren't really predictable at all. When I thought something I've seen in films countless times was going to take place, I was shocked by something completely different. Some of it was refreshing, but it was awfully hard to get used to. I think this film successfully encompasses every possible human emotion and packs it into two-and-a-half-hours of time. It managed to contrast itself in so many ways, and still make sense at the end, at least I think it did, kind-of. There were points throughout when I would look at the screen and just think "What the heck? What in the world were they thinking?". This would be a very bad movie to see bits and pieces of, because it would make zero sense (it had a bit of trouble making sense seeing the whole thing) and if you didn't see it from start-to-finish, I think you would get to certain scenes and not be able to take them seriously. There is a certain belief in movies (or maybe it's extreme imagination)that you have to have in order to enjoy certain films.
This film is incredibly violent. I don't think three minutes went by in the course of the movie where someone wasn't slaughtered for some reason or another. Originally I was a bit taken aback, but the violence didn't seem real because of the way the movie was shot. The black-and-white-with-some-color effect was somewhat disorienting. I enjoyed the effect, and respect it because that is the way the graphic novels were illustrated, but I'd hate to see it abused over and over in other films as I'm sure it probably will be now that this one has hit the market.
The whole manner in which the film was shot was very interesting. The comic-book style that the graphic novels were written in was definitely applied to the cinematography. Since the screenplay was written by the author of the series, Frank Miller, it remained very loyal to the novels, having much, if not all of the dialect taken directly from them. The way the film was shot was also very persistant; the key frames in the novels (or at least, in the beginnings of the novels, which is all I’ve looked at) were shot very precisely, and the actors and actresses chosen to play the characters even looked something like them, though Bruce Willis did not seem as old as the character he was playing.
The fact that there were three or four different plotlines both entertained and irritated me; there were both positive and negative qualities to having the film written like this. I really liked it because none of the plots was too long or drawn out, and I didn’t get bored of any of them, though towards the end, I was wondering when the film was going to end. There were several scenes which seemed like a good conclusive ending scene, only to be followed by another good conclusive ending scene, it was like "LOTR: Return of the King" all over again.
I was bothered by the different plotlines at first, because they really had nothing to do with one another other than a common city. It took me by surprise the way they came to an end, and the movie continued, but as the movie was concluding, I saw how the plotlines were interwoven a bit, and I had more respect for the triple/quadruple-plot. Looking back on it, I almost want to see it again to look for clips where the plots crossed each-other that I had missed the first time.
Conclusion
All in all, I didn't know how to react to this movie at first, and as of right now, I still don't. I was utterly blown away (as were many of the characters) by the film, and I don't know if I enjoyed it or thought it was horrible. One thing's for sure; there was not a time during the film when I looked away from the screen. This constantly held my attention, if not for pure entertainment purposes, then because if I didn't keep my eyes glued to the action, I wouldn't have any clue what was going on. It was definately very fast-paced, and if I didn't try to keep up, I would have been lost. The film was constantly changing, and I didn't expect anything that happened. It was really quite shocking, but I'm not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Too Bizarre to Rate