Director:  Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller		Released:  April 2005
Writer:  Frank Miller		MPAA Rating:  R
Players:  Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Elijah Wood, Nick Stahl, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro		Running time:  126 minutes

I purposely chose to know as little as possible about the Sin City comics because I wanted to experience the film on its own merits, not compare the movie to the comic books, which I've been known to do.  There are 3 or 4 separate stories covered, my favorite of which stars Mickey Rourke as Marv.  Marv is one man of a man, seemingly indestructible, violent, a little crazy and ... violent.  Rourke steals the movie, he's a badass.  Also in Marv's story, Elijah Wood plays a silent and deadly killer with a Charlie Brown shirt and glowing eyeglasses who gives Marv a hell of a fight.  Wood is perfectly cast, and finally we can look at him without thinking, "hey, it's the hobbit."

My least favorite story opened the film with Josh Hartnett delivering his hard-boiled noir dialog stiffly, which started the picture on the wrong foot and made me wonder if this experiment was going to work.  But soon enough we move on to Marv's dismemberment fetish and all is forgiven.

There's plenty of female eye candy in Sin City, and the number one lollipop is Carla Gugino, who plays Lucille, Marv's parole officer.  Her body is impossibly curvacious, she manages to actually look the way a comic book hottie is drawn.  One of the lines spoken about her is "with a body like that, she could have any man she wants," which in this case is true.  Unlike, say, any Julia Roberts movie where the other characters act like she's the hottest chick since Marilyn Monroe.  In Sin City, Lucille actually is the hottest chick since Marilyn Monroe.  As far as her nude scene, all I can do is thank her for sharing.  She just moved up on my "celebrities I would sleep with" list (psst, don't tell crocoWife, let's keep this to ourselves).

The most impressive part of the hot chicks brigade is that they are all super-hot.  From Jessica Alba to the ladies in the background who never utter a word, they are hot, each and every one.  Some of these birds are so gorgeous they make Rosario Dawson look pedestrian.  Now that's hot!  And perfect for this picture.  I can admire filmmakers who are willing to go all the way with creating a tone, filmmakers who - in this case - go full bore with the gratuitous violence and nudity.  Although it is more than a little awkward, with all the gratuitous skin, that Jessica Alba never shows hers.  She's playing a stripper in a movie full of sex, nudity, and violence, but she never gets naked.  And Rosario Dawson wears a mesh top that you can't actually see through.  I suspect if a lesser known actress had been cast, it would have been nipple city in, uh, Sin City.  Contractual obligations are a bitch.

Now, about the style of this movie.  Emulating panels from a comic book is a risky proposition.  It reeks of "let's do it because we can, not necessarily because we should."  Luckily, it works really well.  No other film looks like this, it's a unique creation packed with entertainment value.

- crocoPuffs

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