SIN CITY (2005)
SHORT REVIEW: The cinematographer and editor should both get Oscars, everyone else should be executed for the sake of humanity.  I have more respect for your run-of-the-mill pornographer than I do for Robert Rodriquez and/or Quentin Tarantino. The pornographer sells what he sells and doesn’t hide behind a media created veil of legitimacy. Truth be told, Tarantino and his Igor Rodriquez are pornographers. What is sickening is that both of the men are quite intelligent and very talented. They don’t have to create their juvenile trash; they are both capable of making works of beauty. It says something about both men that it doesn’t occur to them to make good works. To say something positive, this film is a sight. Visually it is stunning and clever. However, any positive caused by the visual design is squandered by the ugliness of the content of the rest of the film. The same can be said for the acting. There are some solid performances by Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis and Benico Del Toro but they are acting out horrible scenes of brutal depravity. This film, based on the simpleton work of Frank Miller’s comics shows where we are headed as a culture. This films lays out very plainly what the comic book culture has been breeding for decades. This culture in turn has infected the video game industry that is now set to overtake film as the main means of narrative communication. We will see this nihilistic, anti-salvation postmodern viewpoint in more and more of our mainstream events. This is what the postmodern mind has to offer. When you throw away God and embrace man as the one who will answer your ills you quickly descend into hell. A postmodern world quickly loses meaning. You end up like one of the main characters in this film who irrationally risks his life to avenge a whore he barely knows (after a few hours of sex he decides he loves her,) the postmodern mind will devise its own morality based upon the need of the self. The Tarantino crowd sells postmodernism in a flashy bloody package, claiming it to be cool. I think the world has had enough of cool. The world needs less cool and more good. I am not some prude who reflectively reacts to sex and violence. What I do call for is for it to have purpose and to go towards a defined moral. This film is a postmodern nightmare. There are no morals and there are no heroes. The world is as it is titled: a sin city. The problem is the nihilistic, morally retarded postmodernists don’t admit that there is indeed redemption from the sin that plagues us – Christ. The postmodernists, provided they would have bothered to get this far into my rant, would roll their eyes at my conclusion. This says more about them than it does about me. This film is porn. Treat it as such. RELATED REVIEWS: Other Bruce Willis movies The Whole Nine Yards (2000) The Whole Ten Yards (2004) Hostage (2005) Categories: film, movie, review, Sin City, Tarantino, Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba |
posted by Scott Nehring at 7:25 AM
6 Comments:
When you say how God and Christ are going to dispense salvation to our problems, you sound like you are hiding behind a "veil" legitimacy, that veil being religion. Do you think your faith in religion makes you right? Or does citing God gives correctness to your argument? Or entitles you to deny the existnece of moral depravity that is part of reality?
I suppose your faith also makes rationality pointless, since you already have faith.
One of the aims of the so-called postmodernism movement is to break down barriers between all forms of thought and endeavor, including morality. Through this breakdown of barriers, postmodernism encourages us to challenge what we take for granted and to synthesize new thinking based on the combination and restructing of everything around us.
Your review does not sound like you value reexamination. Instead, you seem quite happy with that which is already established, the traditional sense of morality.
Your review of the film sounds more like a reactionary rant (to which you admit) that hides behind the righteousness of religion, specifically Christianity. (are other religions false religions?)
Watch the film again. Try not to hate it for being anti-thetical to what you are comfortable with. For a moment, however brief it may be, let yourself and your thoughts be challenged by the film. Let your barriers down and try to have an open mind that is willing to accept and understand rather than to insulate and ignore.
What is it that makes people not want to put their names on their comments?
First, thanks for getting through the whole rant. I'd be willing to bet most people of you mindset wouldn't keep their attention on it that long.
My faith is based on rationality. A belief in God is the only rational choice. Denying him is the fantasy. I used to be an atheist. The facts of the Christian faith turned that around. Are the other religions "false religions"? Yes. I wouldn't be a Christian if I thought otherwise. That question simply doesn't make sense since the various religions contradict each other - they all can't be right. Is the Jew less Jewish when he denies Islam? Is the Muslim wrong when he demands that Buddhists are wrong for not accepting Mohammad?
The film, I have watched it again, I usually will give films I do not like a second shot a year or two later to see if I had seen them on a bad day. I stand by my review. Yes, it is a visually striking work, everything based on Miller's cartoons is. The underlying amorality is still sickening. The world depicted in the film is the nihilistic hell where the prisoners have taken over the prison. While this is a great example of what happens when humans are left to our own devices, living the post-modern dream, it is also pornographic in its delivery.
Your reaction confused me. If you're an existentialist, which you certainly appear to be, then you should already understand that the universe is a murky soup of meaninglessness on which we hoisted our own delicate definitions of morality in hopes of giving order to a chaotic and cruel existence. This being the case, there are no rules, no real sets of morality and therefore you have absolutely no basis for your argument. If morality is a figment of our imaginations then where do you get off even speaking a syllable against me? Would your made up morality trump mine? Your call to reason is senseless, since the reason you're directing me to actually doesn't exist - its a construction of our minds. I don't want to sound cold and dismissive but these are your rules, not mine.
The cool thing about my worldview is that yes, I live under morality and yes, I get to have the expectation that others will as well - I don't force them to, I simply have the expectation. All of this and, unlike the other faiths, I am redeemed from my sins to boot via the sacrifice of Christ. You live in your nihilistic swamp if you want. I'll close by saying that you are obviously a smart person, your language shows that. Be honest, investigate Christianity on the facts and based on logical reasoning. Take the facts that are presented and literally try to disprove them. You may be surprised where you end up when you're done. Others have done it and they were surprised as well.
basically, it seems that if a movie does not fit exactly what you want it to, then it's trash. if it doesn't have the morals that you want it to, then it's trash. if it presents a story where man is left to themselves, then it's trash. my impression of your logic would mean that any movie with positive, christian values is a good movie. as long as it doesn't challenge you to think or go against your beliefs, then it's a great movie, the actualy quality of it be damned.
well, i hope you have a lot of fun in your narrow little world, judging everything that doesn't agree with you quite harshly, all for the false sense of security that comes along with your way of thinking.
I find it amazing that the mouth breathers who comment on films like this always want to be anonymous.
A pagan film can be worth watching and if you knew my sites better you'd already know I loathe a majority of Christian film.
Have fun in your broad, meaningless world where you consume everything that is passed to you by your cultural masters like some chump sitting with his mouth open at the end of a conveyor belt. Wise up and grow a worldview, kid.
i'm only anonymous because i don't have an account on any of the things that it tells me to sign in with to choose an identity.
you will never realize how narrow minded your view of the world really is, as people like you are so lost in their faith. it actually makes me sad for the world, as there is much more people who blindly believe these things than there are people who actually stop and think and question things.
i actually make decisions on things based on what i feel and think about situations. there is nobody telling me what i should be thinking. i don't think i can say that about you.
Your concept of Christianity is rather shallow. You should look more into it, since it is clear you're not familiar with it.
So you know, a person "lost in the faith" wouldn't bother to watch a film like this, let alone discuss it online.
You should actually hope more people become Christian as it leads to a more orderly, safer and kinder society. It is the non-believers who are most like to prompt war, commit crimes and be miserable in general.
The fact that you say you make decisions based on your feelings should be troubling to you. Your feelings are meaningless and shouldn't be the basis for your decision making.
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