As I made up my list of my top ten films of the year I noticed something – not one was a box office hit in terms of Hollywood executive standards. None of my ten grossed $100 million at the box office, in fact only one grossed more than $50 million. Though most pulled in an excess of what it took to make, or at least enough to break even, very few people saw the films that I would consider to be the class of 2005.
Walk down the right back alley in Sin City, and you can find anything…
It might seem strange to call a movie as violent and bloody as Sin City beautiful but no other word quite fits. After all the movie vividly contains decapitation, canibalism, castration, severed limbs, truckloads of guns and explosions, and blood in all different shades and colors. It’s a film noir overflowing with deceit, treachery, torture, murder and death. Yet somehow this is all captured as originally drawn by Frank Miller and transferred so lovingly onto screen that one can not help but sit back with wonder and appreciation. Beautiful? ‘Bet your ass!
The plot of the film blends three main stories, with one or two small ones, compiled from Frank Miller’s successful Sin City graphic novels. We get three hardboiled protagonists in the sinful setting of Basin City.
Hardigan (Bruce Willis) is one honest cop in a city owned by the crooks. On his last day on the job he saves 11 year old skinny little Nancy Callahan (played as an adult by Jessica Alba) from a senator’s demented son (Nick Stahl) only to be shot by his partner and put in prison for Junior’s crimes.
