Sin City (2005)

A glitzy black-and-white crime flick with purple prose dialogue and a cold void where a heart oughta be. No big deal. Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller work the pulp fiction fields here. It’s a world where the only good taste is bad taste, the violence is harsh and gratuitous nudity is the best kind (especially if it’s Carla Gugino). The writing, yanked straight from Miller’s comic book series, attempts to be the ultimate in hard-boiled. It’s simmered in every fatalistic cliche. The best thing about it all is that Rodriguez and Miller capture on film the look of a comic strip like no else ever has. It’s aggressively unreal, a green-screened urban nightmare world, faithfully adapted from Miller’s comics and with more than a hint of German Expressionism. On the downside, this is FAKE garbage cinema. It’s high-dollar, processed trash, a ride through a seedy alley in a limousine and with a police escort. The cast of big name actors are at a costume party rather than playing characters and the film’s sumptuous look distracts from the already shallow substance. Which characters live through this? Who dies? Who cares?