Okay ... so I just watched Sin City. My gut response? Visually spectacular. It's everything everyone says it is. As a movie? I was kinda bored after about 20 minutes when the visual thing had worn a bit thin. My biggest problem? This kind of movie is a fantasy - and I generally love fantasy. But it's a sixteen year old boy's fantasy. Violence, sex, yada yada. I mean, the story is stupid. Everything about it is stupid - which is okay, since it's fantasy and in fantasy everything usually is kinda stupid. I'm fine with that.
But it's a kid's fantasy. I mean, women with their butts hanging out? Guys beaten to a pulp but somehow managing to come back and blow away the bad guys? ... I would have loved this when I was sixteen.
But today? It was just boring.
The biggest problem, I think, is that it's like movies from the fifties ... take The High and the Mighty, for example, or Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. Those movies tried to be novels on film. Sin City tries to be a comic on film.
So there's a problem, for me, with the cinematic language - the storytelling technique. And this is not the same thing as the visual technique. As mentioned, visually it is stunning. But it is the images that are stunning, not the storytelling. The storytelling is tedious. They marshall a gazillion stereotypes and archetypes and myths, but do nothing with them.
And what's with the obsession with mutilation? Once again, a sixteen year old boy's vision of the world - his fantasty vision. I don't recall when I've seen so many decapitated heads or severed fingers.
Filmmakers like Rodriguez and Tarrantino are great stylists. But I wonder what guys like this could do if they ever grew up. Ultimately, spectacular though the look is, this is a movie for teenage wankers.
Tag: Movies, DVDs, Sin City
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