Sin City

Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's Sin City can be described with many words, all of them different: Fun, frustrating, subtle, overblown, disgusting, thrilling, terrifying, suspenseful, boring, fascinating, morbid, offensive, funny, sick, insane, sexy, slick, overlong, too short, reckless, careful, crazy, and above all, entertaining.
It's a strange bird, this one... What it does (and successfully, for the most part) is to make a film that intentionally takes away the audience's emotional attachment to the characters, and yet still holds attention and still holds suspense. You feel almost nothing for them in a "conventional" sense. You don't have that feeling as you do in most films where, in your mind, you're putting yourself in their position, saying "what would I do?" You're just sitting back, enjoying the ride, eagerly anticipating the next development.
The film is, without a doubt, one of the first to ever truly translate the feeling and tone of a graphic novel/comic to the screen. The film knows exactly what it is... the dialogue is corny, but played in such a tongue-in-cheek fashion that that's frankly where most of the laughs come from... the fact that everyone knows that this is something that is larger than life. And the violence actually gets so extreme and over-the-top that sometimes you can't help but just laugh at the absurdity of it all. Nothing is really taken too seriously in this world that they've created. And back to the laughs I mentioned before... it may not seem like it from everything you've heard or read about it, but this is a pretty damn funny movie. The audience I saw it with was laughing and clapping and really getting into it. I definitely think you've accomplished something in a film, when you have older people in the audience (50s and 60s) who are laughing at limbs being cut off and people being beaten to a pulp. Anyway, it's all being done to people who deserve it in the film, so it's definitely a crowd-pleasing sort of thing.
If you can't stomach graphic violence, then do not see this film... I was talking to Mike on the phone a few minutes before the movie started (he had seen the movie the night before), and he described the violence as "brutal". And brutal it is - limbs and body parts fly everywhere, and the only real reason the film has an R rating is because the blood is yellow and white instead of red (the old Hong Kong movie trick - also used in Kill Bill - where the most violent scenes in the film are in black and white, and therefore less realistic, and more likely to get by the MPAA unscathed...but of course all of this film is in black and white anyway). But almost all the violence in the film seems warranted - mostly because of the tongue-in-cheek tone the film has.
There are negatives to the film, however. The beginning of the film uses a child in jeopardy in an unnecessarily, disgustingly manipulative way (the moment does bring huge amounts of suspense, however) and the film itself (2 hours, 6 minutes) could be about 10 minutes shorter (it drags the most during Clive Owen's segment). But all in all, it's amazingly strong and assured. I went into the film wondering how Roger Ebert could have given as much praise as he did (four stars) to the film. I came out understanding why he did (although I wouldn't rate it as high as he did).
I was actually thinking, watching the beginning of the movie, that this might turn out to be a total piece of shit... it took me until about half way into the 3rd segment, the Mickey Rourke segment (which is about 30 minutes into the film) for me to finally get into the rhythm of the film and get into its humor. I noticed a lot of the audience did, too. No one really laughed until the same point in the film, where Rourke has a funny line of dialogue...the audience was relaxed by then, and everybody laughed. I don't know what it was for them, but for me it basically took me that long to get into it because the 2nd segment, with the kidnapped girl, left such a bad taste in my mouth (don't worry, she isn't killed or anything...to the contrary: she grows up to be Jessica Alba) that it actually took that long for me to realize that the entire film wasn't going to be as dark as that. On the whole, it is a dark, gruesome film. And after I saw it, I liked it, but I didn't think it was going to be something I was going to see again for awhile. But now as time passes, I'd really like to see it again to see how my reaction is.
The acting is also something strange. At first glance, it doesn't look like anything special, and even looks bad at times...but looking closely at the subtle nuances in the performances, you can see that every line in the film is drenched in camp. It's actually pretty amazing, if you look at it closely: the performances ride a very fine line. Very rarely (although it does, on occasion) does it ever cross the line and go into a sort of Batman TV show version of Sin City... in other words, a movie that's trying to be crazy, but takes itself seriously and isn't in on the joke. But yeah, a huge cast... Clive Owen is pretty damn interesting in this; I haven't really seen him in anything and it really makes me want to see Closer even more. Bruce Willis plays a variation on his tough-guy persona; he does a better than average job. Rosario Dawson really stands out here; she just surges with a raw sexuality and a fierceness. Jessica Alba is basically just eye candy here; she isn't that good when she speaks, but she hardly does, so it works. Nick Stahl is pretty insane in this...but I won't give it away... The rest of the cast (Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Alexis Bledel, Josh Hartnett, Michael Madsen, Carla Gugino, Michael Clarke Duncan, Jaime King, Benicio Del Toro) are basically just glorified cameos, but Del Toro particularly stands out. The direction is strong, mostly because Rodriguez based shots directly on Frank Miller's images, shot by shot (which is a big reason why Miller has a co-director credit) and translated them to the film. The story is in non-linear structure, which definitely helps keep the film moving, and it never feels bogged down.
The film itself looks amazing, but it's (amazingly) not just about flaunting the look in this film, a la Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow... I'm not convinced at all by Rodriguez's claims that shooting on digital is better rather than film. First of all, I'll always be one of those people who loves the look and the feeling of something shot on film. Say what you want, but it just feels different to me. I know George Lucas shot parts of his first Star Wars prequel on digital and the rest on film and dared anyone to be able to pick out which was which, but a movie just feels different when it's shot digital. Not bad, just different. I don't know if it ever will look like film, but at least right now, it doesn't. It's too smooth, too sharp, too much like...video.
I've heard that Rodriguez plans to shoot more of Miller's stories and translate them to the screen, for a sequel. I'd welcome that... I'd have no problem watching another one of these films.