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2005-06-03

Sin City Sin City Sin City! Speaking as a comic geek, a drooling admirer of both Clive Owen and Benicio Del Toro, and a sad lonely bastard with no life at all, I must admit that the inexcusably tardy UK release of this movie was the biggest news round these parts since�er. Let�s just say it was big news. And unlike most long-anticipated events, this flick was not a disappointment: it looked like a Frank Miller comic, it talked like a Frank Miller comic, it brutally kicked fifty kinds of ass like a Frank Miller comic; in fact, it was the most slavishly faithful adaptation of any literary (or quasi-literary) source I�ve ever seen outside of a BBC historical drama (just like Pride and Prejudice, except with more car chases and mutant serial killers!).

I have to say, though, that while I accept that the buxom femme fatale is an accepted convention of film noir and of comic books, and while I realise that Miller has created his torpedo-breasted arsenal of murderous sirens with an ironic, meta-referential wink to his post-modern, post-feminist (mostly male) audience�dude. What did your momma do to you, Frankie? Every female character in Sin City is a) a whore (literally), b) stacked like a brick shithouse, and c) winds up the victim of outrageous sexual violence. Well, come to think of it, everyone in the Sin City comics takes a bruising sooner or later, and the women are on the delivering end of the beatings more often than not, but�I don�t know. Are Sin City�s ass-kicking, bra-bursting heroines an empowering reclamation of antiquated stereotypes of female victimisation, or are they merely a self-indulgent illustration of Miller�s sado-masochistic sexual fantasies?

Ha! Gotcha! I�m just fucking around. I don�t really give a toss whether post-modern pop culture irony is insidiously undermining the progress of feminism. I just wish Clive and Benicio got to show as much skin as Rosario Dawson. Even with his head sliced off, Benicio is one fine-looking piece of tail.

And lo, it is Friday! I�m going to London this weekend, because it is there, and because I can. Stick that in your pipe and Big Smoke it.

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