Sin City!

Sin City: Load of bull!

The analogy is simple-the fact that European languages can be written using English alphabets still doesn’t make them any more accessible to an English speaking person as languages written in other scripts, like Arabic etc.–one still needs to know the grammar, the rules, the subtlities and so on. In the same way, books/comics/comic strips–when adapted to the big screen have a great responsibility at hand–making the uninitiated familiar with the grammar, the innards of the story. Something which the makers of LOTR and HP might have managed, but the makers of Sin City are way off the mark.

Here, there’s just so much compulsive obsession about getting every single frame look exactly like in the comic strip, that the end result ends up being just that–a collage of frames sans emotion, sans depth, sans substance. There isn’t much to write home about the style too. Resembling something of a hybrid between Kill Bill and second grade animation, the sole point of the movie–violence–comes across as so alarmingly disappointing, its pitiably funny. Everything in the canvas looks constructed (which it is)—right from the buildings to the cars to the whole environment—there isn’t a single pixel that evokes a sense of grittiness. Everything’s calculatedly ghetto-cized by some imaginative designer but the “plastic” feel is so imminent, its frustrating to watch (this, when the film was supposed to be a peek at a dark fictitious city with rough-and-grimy streets and dangerous people).

And then there’s this thing called “action”. Yup, Sin City packs in about a millionth of adrenaline rush in the action sequences as fighting with your Gijoes at home might give. In true Kill Bill style, there’s the usual slashing, hacking, body parts flying, weapons aimed from sky, pistols backfiring, fistfighting, speed chasing– all looking like some cheap third person shooting video game in auto mode.

There are no characters to speak of. Some loser from nowhere who gets a hit everytime he slashes gets all senti when a hooker he sleeps with is mysteriously found dead in bed. Turns out its some twisted tale of some godforsaken Senator buying a cannibalistic psycho to do the job (Yawn). Then there’s another cliched storyline of some random ex-photographer accidently killing off a cop (since the cop’s taken his disguise a wee bit too seriously) and alongwith some hooker-female fighter army (who together run a part of city called “Old Town” or something…LOL) tries to cover his tracks by doing some more slashing and hacking. And finally, there’s this almost-retired cop who is imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit (the same old yarn of a wronged honest cop taken for a ride by politicians etc).

The females particularly have 2 jobs– to flaunt their anatomy and to launch into Uma Thurman style hacking. In typical noir fashion, the males do little else than frown, punch, sh*g, frown some more and punch even more. Surprisingly, the film’s choc-a-bloc full of truly able performers, who unknowingly and valiantly try to give some meaning to the going ons. But the screenplay and direction being so stilted the way it is–only a handful of their attempts yield anything watchable. Of the ensemble, the three leading men–Bruce Willis as the wronged cop Hartigan, Clive Owen as the ex-photographer and Mickey Rourke as the Hellboy-ish Marv manage to be effective. It goes without saying, that the kind of potential the script and the actors had, all that was needed was to turn the comic strip into an entertaining screenplay. Which is what the makers muck up, bigtime.

The dialogue writer takes his job a tad bit too seriously in this make-believe plastic fest, and tries being all ironic and philosophical and rough in every line. Not surprising then that every one of these lines falls flat. It doesn’t help much at all when there’s an irritating voiceover which reads like one long dry monologue throughout the 2 hours (after about 15 minutes, everything being said on this commentary registered as blah blah blah by my brain–that’s how uninvolving is the film). Read the following line from the movie:

Marv (loser-hitman of 1st story): The night’s as hot as hell. It’s a lousy room in a lousy part of a lousy town - I’m staring at a goddess. She’s telling me she wants me. I’m not going to waste one more minute wondering how I’ve gotten this lucky. She smells like angels ought to smell, the perfect woman… the Goddess. Goldie. She says her name is Goldie.

The whole movie is flush with such boring, inane lines being blurted in the background as if the viewers are some kindergarten kids. No scene is allowed to speak for itself–you always have someone blah-blahing all the way through it.

One couldn’t care less for the three stories and their respective characters—the film’s pure sh*t on toast somehow being revered thanks to Tarantino’s name tag attached to it (who IMHO gets way more hype than he’s worth).

Very pseudo both in style and content, totally dry, repulsively sexist and shallower than any of the umpteen horror movies put together, in one word Sin City is just that–BRAINDEAD.