By 
I’ve finally watched Sin City on DVD and what a relief I did not pay to see this in the movie theater. It’s so terrible I wouldn’t even bother to buy it for $5 in the bargin bin. I was greatly intrigued by the visual look of the previews, and indeed, Robert Rodriquez and his crew captured Frank Miller’s black-white-one color drawings to perfection. Yet watching the actors living out their roles within this green-screen environment is about as fetching as watching paint dry. I can only imagine how bored Bruce Willis must be playing off Jessica Alba in a holodeck set, hoping the special effects are going to add suspense to his wooden performance. Willis’ opening bit, that later turns into the Yellow Bastard story arc, is pathetically dull. We watch Willis sneak up on two goons guarding a car and can’t imagine how any moron wouldn’t see him coming on such a brightly lit soundstage. And Jessica Alba? She’s a trainwreck. The story calls for her to be sexy, to be scared, to be horny for Willis’ old cop—but she’s only pretty and airheaded. I thought I read some article that said she didn’t want to dance in a g-string because her family might watch the film. I’ve never seen such a hot chick look so fucking un-sexy that it made my penis feel like it was just dipped in candlewax.
So you won’t get an erection during Sin City, nor will you care much about any of the characters. The one that comes off the best is Mickey Rourke as Marv. Is it because Marv is simply the strongest character in any Sin City story or because Rourke is such a good actor? The last thing I remember, he brought a Mexican hooker into seduce Kim Basinger in 9 ½ Weeks, then bam, he disappears off the face of the earth. (IMDB says he’s worked constantly but I never saw anything after that.) He's great and he does have the gravitas to pull of Marv with one vital exception: I don’t feel that he really has any true remorse about Goldie. Was it voice over narration, which almost never works in film? The graphic novel communicated Marv’s freakish existence to an extent that just doesn’t carry over in the film.
The look is what carried over into the film. If you’re into art style, then you probably love this movie and don’t care about anything else. I thought that Hayden Christensen could teach all of them how to act in front of a green screen and any of the Holodeck episodes of Next Generation had more suspense. Nuff said.
