Review: Sin City
Took the Spousal Unit to see Sin City on Friday. Let's just cut to the chase: she hated it. "It was the first movie in a long time that I couldn't wait to end," she said shortly after the credits rolled. If you think this is a girly reaction see below.
Read somewhere (William Goldman, perhaps?) that the use of narration is the first sign of a weak script. This film didn't use narration so much as internal dialog. Far more of that than words between characters. While I wouldn't say I enjoyed this aspect I did get used to it.
Our daughter said the story structure mimicked Pulp Fiction and she is right, of course. (We taught her to be right about these things.) Multiple short stories that touch each other ever-so-slightly.
This would be OK if the short stories had maintained some semblance of classic structure. The audience often had nobody to empathise with, although Bruce Willis' Hartigan worked well for a short period.
Visually, the film looked like a noir Sky Captain. I found the style appropriate while the occasional use of color had me searching for a pattern. Didn't find one, except to draw attention to some aspect of a scene. Most of the blood was white so that when it was red the violence felt more pronounced.
My wife asked what the point of the movie was? If a theme exists, it may be expressed as, "People live mean, pointless lives and trying to do otherwise is equally pointless."
As pointless as the movie itself.