Sin City

[Quasqueton]

Violence Says
There are several websites that report on movies with a desire to inform Christian viewers whether a movie is appropriate or not for their religious sensibilities. I'm sure it's quite useful, but occasionally their cold and precise rundown of inappropriate elements can come across as comedy gold. I don't know any hardcore Christian who'd consider Sin City appropriate movie fare, but in case you did... please keep in mind the following:

What I find most amazing is that someone had to sit there and note all this. That is a long list, and pretty specific. And was it a person whose sensibilities would be disturbed who took these notes?

Another thing that cracked me up:

There is one point in the movie where Marv hits and knocks down/out a wolf. Just a punch. He even is gentle and apologetic to the wolf. Then at the end of the movie, in the credits, there is a note that the ASPCA monitored the taping of this movie and they approve that no animal was harmed. There is no note that any of the hundred acts of violence against *humans* did not result in harm to a person. Funny as hell.

Quasqueton

 

[Arnwyn]

A solid 7, for me. I thought it was pretty interesting and unique, what with techniques they used to transfer a comic book to film. So definitely a decent movie, I thought. (Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of the source material.)

 

[Henry]

There is one point in the movie where Marv hits and knocks down/out a wolf. Just a punch. He even is gentle and apologetic to the wolf. Then at the end of the movie, in the credits, there is a note that the ASPCA monitored the taping of this movie and they approve that no animal was harmed. There is no note that any of the hundred acts of violence against *humans* did not result in harm to a person. Funny as hell.

Quasqueton

Probably because they really COULDN'T make that statement, because in every movie where there's stunts, done by live actors, someone's getting a chipped tooth, a fractured finger, a broken nose, etc. Insurance policies cover that, but the actors can contractually enter into it.

When I saw the wolf, out of the damned blue, I was watching this with my wife, and thought, "Oh, heck, he's going to do something to the wolf, isn't he?" and half expecting my wife to storm out of the theater - she can't STAND even simulated violence to animals. (She'll never watch Old Yeller or K-9.) But Marv handled it in such a way that she approved. Then again, one doesn't go to a movie like Sin City and not expect blood and gore and bloodthirsty mayhem on humans.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Saw this movie yesterday and so far it's my favorite movie adaptation of a comic book.
I'm a little confused about people complaining about the level of violence in this movie. Even if youre not familiar with the source material, its rated R. It even tells you in the rating WHY it's rated R. There are glimpses of Guns and swords in the trailer you have to assume that they get used. The reason that SIN CITY escaped an NC-17 rating probably has nothing to do with bribes (that's Lucas' and Speilberg's thing) and everything to with the fact that almost none of the blood depicted in the movie was RED. Most of it was either white or yellow, for some reason the MPAA has no problem with something being bloody if the blood is not in color. It's why KILL BILL 's sequence in the House of the Blue Leaves was allowed for the most part to remain intact ( and the sequence was actually written that way in the script).

You want an example of NC-17 level violence that was allowed to pass? SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
I'm sorry but I've said this before, there's no way that's an R movie. It's not just the violence it's the pure intensity of it.

anyway 8.5 and definitley RR's best film to date.

 

[WayneLigon]

I was very pleased by the movie. Excellent casting, cinematography...everything. With all the cool stuff coming out this year I doubt it'll wind up being my favorite for this entire year but it is so far.

 

[Umbran]

Then again, one doesn't go to a movie like Sin City and not expect blood and gore and bloodthirsty mayhem on humans.

You are very, very wrong here, Henry. Don't assume everyone has the same expectations.

I went with a bunch of people this weekend. Of the 7 people in the group, only two had ever read the comic. And only two (not the same pair) were not surprised at the level of violence.

I hadn't read much about the movie. The TV ads I saw did not play up that it was violent. All most of us knew was that it was a movie based upon a comic book. So, we had no real indication of the high-violence level.

 

[Henry]

I dunno - I may have had unrealistic expectations, because i saw at least two reviews the day before and the day of, I saw the previews months before on E! entertainment network, and an interview or two with a couple of the actors, and all of the sources I saw said to expect high violence. One even likened it to Once upon a Time in Mexico (not far off). That, and the name, seemed to scream violent to me, if not very violent.

All said, it still wasn't as violent to me as Kill Bill, because the blood was often played down by the gray-tones, whereas in KB everything was 3D-Super-Real-oVision.

 

[Pielorinho]

There is one point in the movie where Marv hits and knocks down/out a wolf. Just a punch. He even is gentle and apologetic to the wolf. Then at the end of the movie, in the credits, there is a note that the ASPCA monitored the taping of this movie and they approve that no animal was harmed. There is no note that any of the hundred acts of violence against *humans* did not result in harm to a person. Funny as hell.

To build on what Henry said, from the perspective of someone in the animal welfare biz:
1) The notice was almost certainly that the American Humane Association monitored the taping; the ASPCA is a primarily New-York-based organization, and it's the AHA that does movie monitoring.
2) The human actors all choose to be in the picture, and get paid handsomely for their work. The animals don't make the same choice.
3) In the bad old days before the AHA imprimatur became standard, directors would routinely kill animals during the filming of a movie for dramatic purposes--the classic example being spaghetti Westerns in which horses would be run at a gallop into a tripwire, causing them to fall at full speed and break many bones. They'd get shot once the scene was filmed. Human stuntsmen were never subjected to this kind of rigor.

For more information about AHA's process, check out http://www.americanhumane.org/site/PageServer?pagename=pa_film.

As for Sin City, I neither liked nor disliked it as much as I expected. It was well done, and I'm still thinking about the movie several days after having seen it, but it didn't blow me away. I've never read the graphic novel, but I'm a big fan of film noir (especially The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, two of my all-time favorite movies). This had the look and the feel of film noir, but the dialogue just didn't sparkle as much as I'd hoped it would.

Daniel

 

[Henry]

This had the look and the feel of film noir, but the dialogue just didn't sparkle as much as I'd hoped it would.

I saw in an E! Interview with Robert Rodriguez that the reason he liked the dialogue of the Sin City strips was that, like Film Noir was shocking to the audience of the 1930's and 1940's, presenting an image of life that was not normally seen in movies, Sin City did the same sort of shock for audiences of the 1990's and now the 2000's. It just seems to take more to shock an audience now.

 

[ragboy]

It just seems to take more to shock an audience now.

It didn't shock me so much as make me a little sad that such an innovative artistic approach (comic and movie) was tied to such crap stories. There's so much potential to tell some truly amazing stories with Miller's artistic style... anyway. I'm probably reading too much into it. It's a comic book movie after all. All the lines are heavily drawn...