SIN CITY: Just when you thought it was SAFE to go back to the theater!
Written: Apr 01 '05 (Updated Apr 02 '05)
Product Rating:
Pros: Highly original style.
Cons: Violence; sexism and apparent pandering to adolescent fantasies of a questionable nature.
The Bottom Line: If you can stand the stress, and you want something VERY different, go see a revolutionary film. Otherwise, go see the new "Bambi" DVD re-release.
Well, I expected the unusual when I went to see SIN CITY, but I wasn’t prepared for THIS. No, I don’t think we’re in Kansas this time either, Toto.
Robert Rodriguez has started something here. No, I don’t think it’s as big or as radical as the first STAR WARS movie, but I think you might expect to see at least three and maybe as many as six or seven SIN CITY-style movies before the new wears off. It’s a novel way to make a movie, and in many ways it works.
But be forewarned: SIN CITY is about as eyeball-splattering violent a movie as you will ever see. It is violent in its graphic depictions of death, torture, and dismemberment and it is violent in that its bad guys and its “good” guys all seem to make Jack the Ripper look like a college prankster by comparison of their respective M.O.’s. And to add further to the violence, the in-your-face cinematography, the bottom-feeder language, the themes such as child molestation and murder-is-wonderful in the air, and the all-over-the-map-50’s-rock-on-steroids music are all pounding at you with the relentless ferocity of a jackhammer cranked up to atomic-powered velocity. No, a chick-flick it ain’t, and with the hard-bittenly-acted presence of Brittany Murphy, 2004’s chick-flick sweety-tweety queen with “Little Black Book”, the irony is almost overpowering.
So don’t take the kids or the faint-of-heart, and don’t expect any of what we used to call “redeeming social value.” This is a whole ‘nuther animal. This is the cinematic equivalent of what some of us call smashmouth football played on a field of broken glass covered with acid. It’s filth chic, and it’s nightmare alley deluxe too.
But even so, flying body parts and desecrated family values aside, there is a certain warped artistic genius in this movie, rather like seeing Godzilla save the world by beating the invaders from Mars even as he wipes out half the human population of the world in the process. The 3 “heroes” of the story (Bruce Willis and Clive Owen stand out) are all distinguished by the fact that they love and protect women and children, and to that degree have something of what we would call positive societal values. And this in some ways may be a path into understanding what the story (or stories, for there are several strands to the ambiguous storyline which seem to be curled in upon themselves timewise in a messy chronology perhaps meant to underscore the brain-damaged ambiance of the feel and look of the movie) means.
If there is a message, in its comic-book, pulp-fiction approach, it may be within the realization that the closest movie to this movie in the last 30 years or so may be CONAN THE BARBARIAN. For SIN CITY is about an urban world that has devolved from civilization into barbarism, and only the fittest will survive the devilish horrors that permeate meaner-than-believable mean streets and engulf the vulnerable. It’s sort of like saying that if it took 10,000 years for civilization to get to this point, we have now come 360 degrees and we have destroyed civilization and the result is that now we have to live in Hell on Earth. The only things that will ease the pain are sex, smoking, booze, drugs, and the “joy” of inflicting pain on those we hate, and we (get to) hate just about everyone. The whole world has become a city, and Sin is In in the city-world.
Oddly, one of the “heroes” acknowledges God, but he’d much rather PLAY God that RESPECT God, but that, too, is in line with the barbarian tradition as we know it. The world created here is probably one that God would have tossed into the trash as a beta model before he made the real thing.
But as with CONAN THE BARBARIAN, there is a dark energy in all of this, and a strange kind of interesting humor too. The violence crosses back and forth across the line of the real and the comic-book, which leaves you wondering. And there are layers and layers of irony.
Possibly the worst downer of all about the movie is not the mountains of violence, but the Everest-high summit of the devaluation of women as thinking persons. Women here are only of value if they (a) have the looks and brains of a burned-out hooker or stripper, or (b) if they are a I-need-to-be-rescued innocent young teenager. This is the stuff of roughhouse, redneck male fantasies and it shudders with fear in the presence of any woman with an I.Q. of over 100. Even Conan’s girlfriend had better neurons going for her than these baby-minded babes. Which almost makes you wonder if the real target audience for this movie is insecure 14-year-old hormonally chaotic nocturnally challenged boys worried about their manhood and longing to be some badddd superman-type who kills like those schoolboy killers but who is a babe-magnet to kill for. So sexist is the movie that it almost makes you wonder if it is deliberately courting an attack by hordes of feminists just to get a bump in the publicity and subsequent ticket sales.
Even so, if you can filter through all the garbage, there is a riveting movie here. Willis does a good job of sticking to some kind of credibility, and he might have played it for laughs, but he is apparently searching for something deeper. The secularism of this age with its deification of materialism may yet bring civilization to a crashing halt in the way garishly depicted in this movie, and if so Willis seems like he wants to honestly explore what such an apocalypse would look like. He finds it, unfortunately, through a profound sacrifice which enables someone to live. And if so, then ironically, all the movie really proves is that civilization hasn’t died yet, as long as men are willing to give their lives for others. It’s an interesting take on contemporary anthropology. But you may want to bring your barf bag. At any rate, it’s original and will kick off some interesting thinking in your brain, if your brain is still working at the end.
So see it if you are in a tough frame of mind.
Or pass on it, and save yourself some mind-rot, and save your mind for better things, which well may be advisable, for there are better things.
But whichever way it goes, I suspect we haven’t seen the last of its kind. It pushes the edge of the envelope, and people are drawn to that these days, for better or for worse. And I suspect there will far more depressing derivatives.
Just keep your perspective.
Four Stars/****
PS: INTERESTING IRONIC POLITICAL FOOTNOTE FOR THE SKEPTICALLY OBSERVANT: In the credits at the end of the movie, it is plainly evident that the movie was not filmed in Hollywood, but in AUSTIN, TEXAS. The screen credits go on to thank everyone on the Texas Film Commission for helping make the film possible, and Special Credit is given to Texas Governor Rick Perry and his wife for all their fine help in making the film possible. The reason this is somewhat hilarious is that “Smilin’” Governor Perry has gone to great lengths to attempt to persuade the Texas electorate that he is a good, down-home Republican who upholds high family values. The film, of course, is a testimony to something well… somewhat different. At any rate, I’m sure the good governor will appreciate seeing his name in lights…and associated with one of the most violent and non-family-values films in history. Ironies upon ironies…
An amazing cast of big-screen favorites is directed by Robert Rodriguez (Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn), Frank Miller -- and special guest director Q...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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