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Sin City

EMAILPRINTDimension Films

Sin City reviews
74
7.5 User Score:

Generally favorable reviews

Based on 40 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 367 votes
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Action  |  Crime  |  Drama  |  Suspense/Thriller

Written by: Frank Miller (graphic novels)

Directed by: Frank Miller
Robert Rodriguez
Quentin Tarantino (special guest director)

Release Date:
Theatrical: April 1, 2005
DVD: August 16, 2005

Running Time: 126 minutes, Color / B/W

Origin: USA

Summary

RATING: R for sustained strong stylized violence, nudity and sexual content including dialogue

Starring Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Elijah Wood, Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Clarke Duncan, Carla Gugino, Josh Hartnett, Michael Madsen, Jaime King, and Brittany Murphy

Robert Rodriguez and comic book icon Frank Miller co-direct Sin City, based on the series of graphic novels created, written and illustrated by Miller. The film is infested with criminals, crooked cops and sexy dames, some searching for vengeance, some for redemption and others, both. (Dimension Films)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

New York Magazine Ken Tucker

The visually stunning Sin City has grit to spare and a thrilling undercurrent of morality.

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100

Time Richard Corliss

Sin City is brazenly, thrillingly alive.

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100

Slate David Edelstein

I loved it. Or, to put it another way, I loved it, I loved it, I loved it. I loved every gorgeous sick disgusting ravishing overbaked blood-spurting artificial frame of it.

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100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This isn't an adaptation of a comic book, it's like a comic book brought to life and pumped with steroids.

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100

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's a guaranteed must-see for its generation. Sin City has a long, long shelf life ahead.

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100

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A movie unlike any other.

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100

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Two hours and six minutes has never seemed so much like two and six-tenths seconds. It's pure pulp metafiction.

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91

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Some things in Sin City are almost too much to watch: the violence, the cruelty, the irredeemable evil. But it's irresistibly magnetic because it serves as a barely distorted mirror to our world.

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90

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Sin City is the first mainstream American picture I've seen this year that feels even remotely brash or original. It's a hard, viciously funny little movie, one with all the subtlety of a billy club. But there's artistry here.

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89

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Honestly, this ultra-noir adaptation of Frank Miller's black-and-white cult comic series is a visual feast ripped straight from the original medium's blood-soaked pages.

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88

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Tarantino may have nicked the title first, but this is the real ''Pulp Fiction," with all the drama and the dead ends that implies.

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88

USA Today Mike Clark

Occasionally very funny, the picture tends to coast on its cosmetics. A first-rate script might have made it a twisted masterpiece.

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88

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Sin City is an evil place, full of awful people, an obsessive movie full of monomaniacal tough guys. Yet when Miller and Rodriguez move it into gear, noir lives.

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88

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The worst thing I can say about this savage, sexy and ferociously funny screen translation of three stories from Frank Miller's Sin City series of graphic novels is that it's too much of a good thing.

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88

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The most visually inventive comic book adaptation to make its way to a movie screen.

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88

Premiere Aaron Hillis

A rough-and-tumble magnum opus of digital filmmaking that thrillingly basks in the sick, slick, sexy and quick-witted excesses of its imaginatively mutant stylizations.

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80

Empire Kim Newman

For the guys it's Rodriguez's best film by far and a treat for fans of good-looking girls in black-and-white, of classic film noir and of imaginative ultra-violence.

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80

Newsweek Devin Gordon

It's gory stuff, but it's also a visually arresting blitzkrieg with action so bare-knuckled you'll leave the theater spitting out teeth.

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80

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Sin City draws on the cumulative history of both mediums, creating a pastiche that would have been technologically impossible even three years ago. Its creators invent a queasily intoxicating new world.

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80

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Rodriguez clearly assumes Sin City to be his "Pulp Fiction," his rambling portmanteau--a blending of disparate tales to form a complete, overwhelming epic.

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80

Variety Todd McCarthy

For geeks, action freaks and sensation-seeking teenage boys of all ages, the price of admission will provide a one-way ticket to hard-boiled heaven.

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80

Film Threat KJ Doughton

Rodriguez slams down the sledgehammer with so much brutal, punishing force, there's no room to breathe.

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75

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Sin City snaps, crackles and pops like no graphic novel ever brought to the screen. Mixing live-action with computer-generated images, it looks like the novels, talks and bleeds like the novels, is as muscular and voluptuous as the novels - and it leaves you breathless as only a movie can.

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75

New York Post Lou Lumenick

This is noir on steroids, cartoonishly ultra-violent and drawing inspiration from Mickey Spillane novels and E.C. comics of the '50s.

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75

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Sin City gives sin a great name -- it's never been more plentiful or looked so gorgeous.

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70

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Rodriguez's evident delight in the form make this a worthwhile piece of eye candy.

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70

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Sin City has been made with such scrupulous care and obvious love for its genre influences that it's a shame the movie is kind of a bore.

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70

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

But once you're good and drunk on the look, details like the tin-eared tough-guy dialogue (which sounds especially stilted issuing from flesh-and-blood mouths) don't seem so important.

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63

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Sin City is always moving on to the next thing, and despite surprisingly good work from its large cast (especially Rourke and Owen, who are both outstanding), the picture feels synthetic and artificial.

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63

Philadelphia Inquirer Dan DeLuca

To say that Sin City is a guy movie - and an often brutally misogynist one, at that - would be an understatement.

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58

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Glued tightly from page to screen, Sin City is so seduced by the visual possibilities of sin that style becomes its own vice.

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50

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

After half an hour spent drooling over its visual splendors, I found the movie every bit as sickening as its creators intended it to be, minus the kicks they so palpably got out of making it.

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50

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

For a relentlessly violent and exploitive noir knockoff, Sin City is mystifyingly flat and static - cartoonish, even, if you want to get tautological about it.

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50

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Mr. Rourke's performance is quite phenomenal, a case of unquenchable talent bursting the bonds of dehumanized artifice.

50

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Sin City is a seedy tribute to rugged masculinity disguised as a rogue's gallery, all the better to please college boys who like their sentimentality slicked with grunge.

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50

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

What binds and clads the new movie most thoroughly, however, is not storytelling but the high pressure of atmosphere.

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40

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Sin City lacks the human interest, not to be confused with humanism, that "Pulp Fiction" had in abundance. As if to underscore the fact, Tarantino guest-directed a scene. It's readily recognizable as the only one in which the dialogue has the slightest conviction.

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40

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Eye-popping yet ultimately thin and shallow as a page in a graphic novel.

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25

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Everything here has been done better in other books, other movies. The lone remarkable thing is the level of violence, which exposes the cowardice and hypocrisy of the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings system.

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0

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The attainment it achieves is in the depths of pointless, mean-spirited exploitation.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 367 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Keenan S. gave it a10:
One of the five best films I've ever seen, Sin City is a masterpiece of monumental proportions. The only reason people are giving this film bad reviews is because they have no taste, thought it was boring, and hated how it represented everything wrong with society. That's what the purpose of it is, it represents what is wrong with society and isn't far from reality. This film was amazing throughout and if you get pissed at films that show the dark side of human nature, then just walk away. If you actually have taste in films and have no problems with films that aren't interested in happy endings or showing a good side of humanity, then this is quite the sight. It's determined to be stylish and feel realistic. BEST COMIC BOOK FILM EVER.

Alex H. gave it a10:
"Sin City" is a perfect comic book adaption that looks exactly like the comic book, and keeps the audience on the edge of their seat the whole time through Mickey Rourke's performance, Clive Owen's action and Bruce Willis' suspense.

R. Lopez gave it a10:
Sin City, how can you describe it? Well one word comes to mind. Outstanding! Sin City is a visual stunning and amazingly well made film with a cast of big screens favorites driving this film. Sin City tells three different stories from the graphic novels themselves. The first follows the big juggernaut Marv(played by Mickey Rourke, who is fantastic here.) Marv is on a man hunt to find the men responsible for the death of the women he loved. The second story follows Dwight McCarthy, a killer trying to find peace form his old life, but as fate has it he's drawn back in when a mad dog cop ( played by Benicio Del Toro.) who is trying to make a mess out of things for Dwight's new girl and the girls of old town. Soon Dwight get's caught up in a murder and a cover-up bigger than him. Can he and the girls of old town save their home? The finally and best story in the film is that of falsely accused detective Hartigan, who while trying to save a little girls life is instead accused of the crimes of another. Now it's been eight years and Hartigan just wants to move on, but somebody won't let the past stay dead. Hartigan has one last job to do, and that is protecting the only person who means anything to him. With that said Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez tell these stories in such a way that they seem like your reading the graphic novel but in actuality your watching a film. No movie has ever caught the fell of a series of books so well before. This movies was nothing but an experiment that exceeded beyond anyone's expectation's, Sin City is without saying a true black& white masterpiece.

Clif C gave it a9:
The epitome of sadistic movies. And it was good that way. The trash, the sadism and the cruelty actually gave the film a sense to the non-sensed and nutcase plot. Extraordinary visuals too. The negative point goes to the cast with all the Hollywood stars. I'd prefer less famous actors.

J. Q. gave it a5:
This is the kind of vile, ridiculously brutal movie made by a country that can't win real wars, and where economic failure causes its citizens to fantasize about ultraviolence. Sixty years ago Americans fought their wars with honor, and for the right reasons, but made movies that respected human dignity. We're flushing ourselves down the toilet of history.

Jeremy E gave it a7:
it looks cool, but it feels dark in an unnecessary way. the plot is so twisted that it makes the movie unenjoyable

Mango P gave it a0:
Paul H Said it best: "When kidnap,torture,rape and cannibalism becomes mainstream popcorn-fodder you really have to ask yourself about the world you're living in." That's all you need to know. A Horrible film. mangopork.com

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