Except for the Spy Kids

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Except for the Spy Kids flicks, I know I can always count on Robert Rodriguez to get actresses in his films to take their clothes off...so I was into seeing Sin City for this, and, of course, for the promise of scrumptous black-and-white cinematography. But take no notice of anyone (Rodriguez included) calling this a film noir flick. There is real film noir -- crime movies made with a downbeat fatalistic attitude, and grounded in a reasonable facsimile of human truth -- and there is simplified noir lite for chumps. By this I mean noir archetypes mixed in with hardboiled machismo, Mickey Spillane-type dialogue, slinky man-eating dames and superhero action bullshit with guys taking four or five bullets in the chest and still breathing, or jumping from 30-story buildings like they're Batman (which never worked for me either...the Dark Knight can float down to the street from the top of a skyscraper because he's wearing a large leather cape?). This is noir as re-imagined by Frank Miller and digested by comic-book geeks in their 30s who live in their lonely heads and haven't gotten laid very much or gotten to know women at all. That said, Sin City has some of the most beautiful black-and-white compositions I've ever seen. It looks like it was shot on silver nitrate stock, and feels every inch of the way like a pure monochrome high...two hours of silvery shimmering bliss. That is, except for the tedious stuff, which is relentless.