{"id":668,"date":"2011-02-20T17:55:44","date_gmt":"2011-02-20T17:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=668"},"modified":"2014-06-24T18:19:25","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T17:19:25","slug":"668","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=668","title":{"rendered":"SIN CITY"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/a>Whichever way you looked at it \u2013 and mostly I do my looking upwards, from the gutter \u2013 the streets of Sin City<\/em> are mean. Really mean. They\u2019re the kind of mean that makes junkyard dogs nervous. They\u2019re the kind of mean that involves dramatic slashes of light through slatted blinds and a reflection catching on a killer\u2019s glasses just so. They\u2019re the kind of mean where a cop with one more day until retirement just can\u2019t resist trying to finish off that one last big case.<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

People say crime is a problem in Sin City<\/em>, but buddy, you\u2019re more likely to get flattened by a clich\u00e9 than shot in the head. And, in the end, almost everyone<\/em> gets shot in the head in Sin City<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This is the kind of place where old, scarred men with gravely voices narrate their own stories. Where a chest full of bullets is a minor inconvenience. Where racial stereotypes are rigidly enforced. And narrators talk in short sentences. Like Chandler. Kinda. But without the beauty.<\/p>\n

Of course the broads have the worst of it here in Sin City<\/em>. First there are the terrible clothing shortages. Sometimes even smart ladies, ones with good jobs, are forced to walk around for days with almost \u00a0nothing on. It\u2019s tough. And if you\u2019re a hooker? Forget about it! Luckily for us guys, there isn\u2019t one chick in the whole damn city aged over thirty. No one wants to have to stare at anything that might be sagging, right? Yeesh!<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the shitty career opportunities. There are only two jobs for dames in Sin City<\/em> \u2013 a whore or a victim. And believe me, buddy, they\u2019re both fucked. But at least the whores get to carry round unfeasibly large calibre weapons. The victims? What can I say, big guy? Sometimes you just got to ritually humiliate someone if you want to justify twenty minutes of ultra-violence. And if it just so happens that it\u2019s always a broad that gets humiliated, well that\u2019s just the way things are on the very mean streets of Sin City<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Hey, but even a place like this has to have something going for it, right? Sin City<\/em> has Marv (Rourke), Hartigan (Willis) and Dwight (Owen), and any town with those guys in it can\u2019t be all bad, am I right? Damn straight.<\/p>\n

Marv, well he\u2019s the star and everyone loves the big dumb lug. Okay, maybe not everyone, but a psychopath sometimes has to torture a lotta stiffs if he\u2019s going to get revenge. Let\u2019s just say that almost everyone that survives his bloody rampages loves Marv. Someone killed Goldie, and Marv loved Goldie, so lots of people are going to die and Marv isn\u2019t going to stop until he gets his revenge on the killer (Wood) and the man who is protecting him.<\/p>\n

Hartigan\u2019s a cop, but one of the honest ones \u2013 no matter what anyone else says.. He\u2019s got one day left on the job, a heart condition, and the senator\u2019s son is torturing and killing little girls and no one but Hartigan wants to stop him. But there are no medals for good guys in Sin City<\/em>. All Hartigan gets is framed and a prison sentence. But you and I both know that when he finally gets out, there\u2019s going to be hell to pay.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s Dwight, who might be Sin City\u2019s<\/em> last knight in shining armour, if he wasn\u2019t a wanted killer with a new face. Dwight can\u2019t stand to see a woman hurt, so when a rogue cop threatens his girlfriend and the safety of the prostitute militia that runs Old Town, Dwight just can\u2019t stay out of the fight. The mob ain\u2019t gonna know what hit \u2018em.<\/p>\n

And there you have it, three tough tales of everyday life in the meanest city in the world. Now some people are gonna tell you this is cheap pastiche, and others are gonna say it\u2019s an homage. I say, you pays your money and takes your choice.<\/p>\n

But let me tell you about Sin City<\/em>. She might be mean, and she might have some ugly spots but you ain\u2019t ever seen a city looked better than this. The Miller stuff \u2013 the sexism, the crummy warmed-over dialogue and predictable, bloody revenge stories \u2013 that stuff I could do without. But the Rodriguez stuff \u2013 the razor sharp action sequences, the fantastically physical performances from a magnificent cast, the technical perfection \u2013 that\u2019s the stuff that makes visiting Sin City<\/em> worthwhile.<\/p>\n

Still, I wouldn\u2019t want to live there.<\/p>\n

(Originally published in Matrix <\/em>173, May\/June 2005)<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whichever way you looked at it \u2013 and mostly I do my looking upwards, from the gutter \u2013 the streets of Sin City are mean. Really mean. They\u2019re the kind of mean that makes junkyard dogs nervous. They\u2019re the kind of mean that involves dramatic slashes of light through slatted blinds and a reflection catching […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":669,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,8,10],"tags":[51,76,43,46],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/sin-city.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s27AP7-668","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1665,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions\/1665"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}