Early (Rough) Review: Too Man Sins For Me
From June 4, 2006:
My coworker's son let me borrow this one. I gave Sin City a chance because it looked interesting and original, even though it's not generally my type of movie. I mean, I sometimes like gritty movies that explore the underbelly of humanity. Pulp Fiction is a favorite of mine, but then again, there's something a bit too cartoonish about all of the outlandish characters in PF.
Even though this film has been developed from a series of graphic novels (that's comic books with meaty stories, ducky), it's anything but strictly cartoonish. It's stylistic and gory and gritty and tough. It's very original, I'll give it that. And it's an intelligent movie.
But there were some flaws, mostly in the way it was directed. I think it was trying to balance stream of consciousness, given the noir narration of some of the characters, with premeditation in the way that each story was loosely interwoven. As such, I spent a good deal of time being confused and never really intrigued. I was confused by the presence of Josh Hartnett from the getgo. I had trouble keeping the character names straight and making the leap each time one of the chapters ended. Plus, I kept being distracted by things. For example, some of my thoughts were like, "Oh, I guess Bruce Willis isn't dead." And "look, a Gilmore girl is a hooker." And, "hey, that's the guy from 24." And "oh, Frodo's a cannibal."
On the other hand, I can see the appeal of this movie. It's different and its own beast. But, and don't hate me for saying this, I think the target audience of this movie is a bit more testosterone-laden than me. For the record, I don't like too many "chick flicks" either. I wasn't expecting anything different, but I didn't really enjoy the movie just the same.
As a film, I'll rate it 8 out of 10 for its minor flaws. Hey, I'm fair. Just because I didn't really like it doesn't mean it wasn't a good movie in its own right. It's just not my bag, baby.
As such, it fails the test. I will not be buying it. I couldn't watch it again, and I have no interest in a potential sequel, which I guess will give the filmmakers time to tell Josh Hartnett's story, because I was the most confused by that. I don't care enough about it to find out, though.