Sin City

SIN CITY (2005) - April 23, 2005
I'll give this movie one thing, it looked good. You wouldn't think a direct panel-to-screen adaptation of a comic book would work, but it does. The use of colour to accentuate certain things in an otherwise black and white movie is another odd choice that definitely worked. So kudos to Robert Rodriguez for making a movie that was almost always visually exciting. But as for the movie itself, well I was definitely enjoying it at first. The story with Mickey Rourke was really good (though perhaps a tad long), but by the middle of the one with Clive Owen I was starting to get restless. After that one I thought it was going to be over, but then there was a whole other story with Bruce Willis. It was pretty good, I guess, but I was definitely ready for the movie to be over at that point. It didn't help that the over the top hard-boiled narration was really starting to wear on me after a while. Don't get me wrong, I like hard-boiled prose as much as the next guy, but after a while it's like shut up for a second. Jeez. Clearly Robert Rodriguez has never heard the old adage "show, don't tell." Oh well. The performances were all really good, it looked good, obviously, and I guess I was never all-out bored. But this was a bit of a disappointment. **1/2