Site icon Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats

The Single Greatest Movie Review Ever

Brad Laidman

bbdance4.jpg

http://www.capalert.com/capreports/sincity.htm

I love to read reviews by anyone and religious zealots especially. These people didn’t like Sin City. It got a perfect score of zero out of 100!

But the greatest thing about the review is that the reviewer had to chronical every single offensive thing about the movie – and he fond a lot!  Poor sap probably had to watch the damn thing 15 times!

“Sin City is yet another film that tends to remind me of the paintings in which a gaggle of demons dance and prance about a boiling cauldron, shrieking with glee as they toss soul after soul into the cauldron of Hell, cauterizing any veins of escape.”

 

Wanton Violence/Crime (W)

Note that management of the local theater, the Driftwood Theater 6 has implemented special controls to allow no one under 17 to enter the auditorium showing Sin City unless their parent(s) or legal guardian accompanies them into the auditorium. Tickets sales will be closely monitored and checked at the door of the auditorium. Even adult siblings may not be allowed to escort their under 17 siblings. Management suspects this film might have been one MPAA vote away from NC-17. Granted, the MPAA guidelines are not law but Driftwood is committed to ensuring a family-oriented service and supporting parental controls. I am proud of the management of the Driftwood Theaters for their bold stance which is apparently not often taken by other theater owners.

Typically an R-rated films requires two or three log sheets to record all the issues of assault on morality and decency. Sin City required 7 1/2 log sheets. Very few of the nearly 1000 films we have analyzed have earned a CAP final score of 100 (the best score possible) and very few films have earned a CAP final score of zero (the worst possible score). Sin City earned a final score of zero (see the CAP thermometers). Each of the six CAP investigation areas (W, I, S, D, O, M) starts with 100 points. Enough aberrant behavior and/or imagery was found in Sin City to cause loss of every point in each of the six investigation areas.

The Findings/Scoring section of these reports, the heart of the CAP Analysis Model, is completely objective to God’s Word and is independent of and insulated from modern morality and ethics. The Findings/Scoring section is even independent of and insulated from my own opinions. However, this Summary/Commentary section, which is precisely that … a summary in commentary format, is independent of the Findings/Scoring section. This Summary/Commentary section may therefore be and sometimes is somewhat subjective.

So, subjectively speaking, though Sin City is a technological masterpiece with high wattage thespians, it is deeply dark, vulgar, sinister and ugly cinematic cyanide. Maybe that is what it is supposed to be. If so, the writers and filmmakers were successful, so successful it is a wonder there were enough acceptable seconds of film to build a preview. That is my subjective opinion of the film, but maybe after nearly 1000 film analyses my “subjective comments” may not be that subjective?

This quilt of three Frank Miller novels: The Big Fat Kill, The Hard Goodbye and That Yellow B—- is complete with the comic book feel imparted by sequential hand-drawn panels. Miller masterfully stitched in to the fabric the sadistic brutality of his novels, trimming the edges of the resultant tapestry with two mini-stories of a slick killer, obviously to set the tone before touring the patterns of murder, prostitution, sadism, brutality and nihilism in the quilt.

Rodriguez amplifies the comic book sadistic brutality with the sense-saturating power of larger-than-life motion picture grandeur. Sin City presents nearly every sin imaginable in every alley with every prostitute and every killer ever given birth by pen and paper. There is extreme violence, extreme in both severity and density. There is vulgar and flippant impure language, dense sexual immorality and bold disregard for life.

We are introduced to the world of Basin City evil with the beginning of the quilt edging as a professional murderer wearing a salesman mask (Josh Hartnett) wooed a young lady in “Mickey Spillane” fashion then murdered her by silenced gunfire. The tone set by such sadistic nihilism is maintained throughout the entire 117 minutes of demonstrations of sin.

Bruce Willis appeared as Jim Hartigan. an aging Basin City cop bent on ending the crime spree of Junior (Nick Stahl), a pedophile after 11 year old Nancy Callahan (Makenzie Vega at 11 then Jessica Alba at 19). That is the 19 year old Nancy on the poster art. In this segment, Hartigan buried bullets into Junior (once in the pedophile’s privates) who, after special medical treatment became That Yellow B—, a grotesquely deformed critter that looked too much like a Feringi from Star Trek: Next Generation, only yellow … all over. Junior was completely consumed by getting even with Hartigan and did so through Nancy 8 years later. Hartigan was framed as a child molester and for those 8 years did time in prison for Nancy. When Hartigan realized that there was no safety for Nancy as long as he was alive, Hartigan blew his brains out — which we saw in the detail of black-n-white negative projection.

In another of Miller’s quilt of stories was Marv (Mickey Rourke) wondering who killed his prostitute quest. Resolved to find and kill the one who killed the only woman who would even look at his stone appearance, Marv discovered Kevin (Elijah Wood) was killing prostitutes, eating them then mounting their heads like hunting trophies. Kevin ate the prostitutes with the help of Cardinal Roark (Rutger Hauer), the most politically powerful man in Basin City who claimed Kevin was eating not only the prostitutes but their souls as well. Now how much sense does that make? If you decide to stomach this film, don’t expect it to make much sense. Of anything.

Clive Owen as Dwight, a former journalist whose territory is the hooker streets, Old Town, spends his time locking horns with a corrupt cop, Jack Rafferty (Benicio Del Toro). For what reason I am not sure. One of the scenes in this episode was of an oriental prostitute slicing up five dead bodies into smaller pieces so the five bodies could be fit into a car trunk

There is a lot more to the content to this film but I suspect the scoring as shown in the Findings/Scoring section is enough to impart its caliber to you. Sin City is yet another film that tends to remind me of the paintings in which a gaggle of demons dance and prance about a boiling cauldron, shrieking with glee as they toss soul after soul into the cauldron of Hell, cauterizing any veins of escape.

I am not going to spend any time summarizing the listing in the Findings/Scoring section in this report. The listing speaks volumes about the content of this film. Nor am I going to provide a list of Scriptures which apply to the sins demonstrated in this film. You probably have a Bible. Every other “shalt not” in the Bible was likely violated in this film. Let the “Selected Scriptures of Armour…” suffice.

SCRIPTURAL APPLICATION(S)
Selected Scriptures of Armour against the influence of the entertainment industry.

Related Posts