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# ‘Sin City’ a bloody good time
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/sin-city-a-bloody-good-time/
- Published: 2005-04-02T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T06:32:26.000Z
- Author: Dan Dunn
- Tags: Entertainment, Santa Monica, #archive-import

Gritty rough-edged atmosphere reigns in “Sin City,” director Robert Rodriguez’s visually arresting adaptation of the very popular (at least, among comic geeks) graphic novels by Frank Miller, who shares a director’s credit. Set in the fictional Basin City, the toughest place on earth, this retrograde pulp pageant is populated with wiseguys, bondage babes, crooked cops and stone cold killers. Then there are the real troublemakers. “Sin City” may be a little light on narrative texture, yet it is nonetheless a weighty cinematic achievement that personifies the future of film-noir.

“Sin City” is an incredibly violent picture, and although the carnage is quite stylized, it’s likely to be off-putting to, say, the sort who cry at weddings … or maybe even football games. The directing duo of Rodriguez and Miller take this eye-popping film where no other comic book flicks have gone before. The look, feel, sound, smell — hell, everything about it — is so faithful to the source material, it’s as though the pages of Miller’s book have actually sprung to life. Lamentably, the stories — three of them, loosely woven together — aren’t as engaging as the production design, leading to diminishing returns once the novelty of the visuals wears thin.

(Rated R for sustained stylized violence, nudity and sexual content and dialogue. 126 minutes)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 2, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/040205.pdf?ref=smdp.com)