Sin City

Films watched:
Sin City
Well I’ve just finished watching Sin City and I thought that I would take a few minutes before heading to bed to put my thoughts down in writing.

First of all a little background:

I absolutely love the Sin City comics, then again I tend to love pretty much anything Frank Miller is involved in (well maybe not the Dark Knight Strikes Again, but hey, everyone makes mistakes). So I was both exited and apprehensive to find out that Sin City was being filmed.

When the film was released, I resisted the urge to see it at home as our cinema is, well, crap. For the last couple of years I have managed to take a trip to London to catch all the big summer films in style (i.e. in a descent cinema), so my plan was to wait until London to see the film. Whilst in Canada I could have seen the film, but again I resisted the urge, again waiting until London. When I eventually reached London I arrived just as terrorists bombed the London Underground and a London bus. Hence, whilst I was thankfully lucky to be alive I did not have the chance to see Sin City (I did however catch War of the Worlds and Batman Begins). By the time I returned back to Guernsey, it was no longer showing at our cinema, so I was left to wait until the film came out on DVD before I could watch it.

Thankfully the Region 1 release wasn’t that far away, so instead of waiting for the region 2 release, I pre-ordered the region 1 DVD, which arrived yesterday.

Anyway, back to the film. I guess that what surprised me the most wasn’t how accurate the adaptation was, but that my least favourite Sin City storyline was by far my favourite section of the film.

The original story “Sin City”, or as it is now know “The Hard Goodbye” was good, but felt rushed. I also was not totally convinced by Mickey Rourke as Marv. At times his performance was good, at others it felt a tad pantomime. I think that problem with this story on film is that the original “Sin City” was split over around 9 issues of very short stories and the film also seemed a tad segmented and rushed in parts as a result.

“The Big Fat Kill” has always been my least favourite Sin City story, mainly because I always felt that the storyline felt a little flimsy when compared to the other stories. However, I absolutely loved the film version. It seemed just spot on, all the characters seemed properly realised and the pacing was just perfect. Clive Owen really was quite excellent as Dwight, I just hope he returns for the sequel.

“That Yellow Bastard” has always been my favourite Sin City story and I was very pleased by the adaptation of this. My only real complaint is that I didn’t buy Jessica Alba as Nancy. It’s not just because she refused to do the nudity for the film, it was just that at times she seemed too wooden. I will admit that it is quite a hard role to portray, i.e. a fragile and sensitive stripper, but I really think that someone else would have been better suited in the role.

Overall 8/10

Now I know that a sequel is in the works and that “A Dame to Kill For” will be one of the stories. I just hope and pray that “Family Values” makes it to the screen eventually, just to see Miho on rollerblade decapitating people left right and centre.