"Sin City"

Friday night I headed out after a friend's birthday party to have my mind sodomized by "Sin City." My homie Christina, who I saw the film with, described it as the most lovingly, artistically made film about murder, torture, rape, child molestation and hopelessness ever.

She pretty much doesn't want to ever see it again. She described the action in the flick as "ultra-violence," a term I hadn't heard in some time.

How ultra-violent is "Sin City" you ask? Well, you remember where the term "ultra-violence" comes from, right? You remember"A Clockwork Orange," right?" Think Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film -- the scene where a man is brutally beaten while Malcolm MacDowell's "Alex" sings an off-key rendetion of "Singing In the Rain," then promptly rapes the fellow's wife?

Oh yeah, Sin City's waaaaay more shocking than that.

Remember Michael Madsen slicing off the cop's ear in "Resevoir Dogs?" Imagine a movie where it's nothing but ear slicing scenes ... and decapitation scenes and torture scenes!

Every moment of this film was like when Tony Dogs's head was in a vice in "Casino" and his eye popped out or when Tommy shot Spider for standing up to him, thus killing him in "GoodFellas."

But worse.

How worse? Well, imagine "Sin City" is like that prolonged torture scene in the Japanese film "Audition" where the creepy S&M girl gets evil on the dude with her acupucture needles then head's over to Anthony Hopkins's crib to help him fry up Ray Liotta's brain like a fajita. Then together S&M chick and Hannibal the Cannibal serve it to Sally Field's daughter just before a totally KKK-ed out Kiefer Sutherland brutally rapes her while Field listens helpless to it on her cell phone, all part of that horrific opening sequence in 1996's "Eye for An Eye" that I'll never be able to remove from my memory ...

Maybe. Maybe that could live up to a fraction of the shock therapy of "Sin City." But I'm not sure. Maybe we should throw in the creepy Nazi that you can't kill from "Hellboy."

And I liked the movie. Really. I liked "Sin City" ... sort of. But I'm going to keep it real and say that it was the most sick, disturbing thing I'd ever seen and I'm can't believe it didn't get rated NC-17. A matter of fact, the only reason why I think it didn't was because of the "cartoon" element and the fact that it was in black and white. Believe me, if "Sin City" had been in color I would have vomited within the first 10 minutes. And this is from a woman who actually likes films by both Paul Verhooven AND Quentin Tarantino.

"Sin City" makes the politically incorrect "sex n' violence" circus of "Basic Instinct," "Kill Bill, Vol. 1 & 2" and "Natural Born Killers" cinematic nursery rhymes filled with lullabyes wrapped in happy, fun-fun candy!

But when not horrified beyond all belief I was enjoying the movie. Some of it was just beautiful to look at. (Loved the snow and rain. Sure, people were getting massacred in it, but I still liked it.) And the dedication director Robert Rodriguez had to Frank Miller's work was remarkable. Obviously not afraid of commitment, Rodriguez committed himself right to the center of hell to make this movie. He stayed true to the original books, but what's interesting in 2-D turns into pure sadism on the big screen. So many times I wanted to scream, "For God sake! Stop shooting the guy. He's DEAD already!" as cops literally unloaded buckets-o-bullets (patent pending) into folks already dead on the ground.

And I really didn't need to see ... well, a lot of it ... I mean, does anyone need to see anyone's testicle get ripped out by hand? And I already think Elijah Wood is creepy looking. This movie only confirmed the fact that his gigantic, freaky blue eyes are SCARRIER BEYOND ALL BELIEF.

That said, the fact that I saw this movie three days ago and it still feels like I watched it ten minutes ago is a testimate to its greatness, even if that greatness is essentially what Christina described as being a two-hour "snuff film."

But really, I liked it, I think ... but I believe my reaction to it was normal. I know that there will be people who will like this movie, but be highly disturbed, like myself. Then there will be people who will be highly disturbed and hate it, but still see its merits, like Christina. Or people who will just plain hate it.

And all those reactions make sense to me. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a lot of people don't like domestic violence and child molestation. What won't make sense to me will be the person who LOVED the movie and slept fine the following night. Or worse yet, the person who gripes about Jessica Alba not pulling the fully Monty for her torture scene like in the comic. You know? Those people who wanted MORE horrible things to happen to helpless people.

I don't even want to meet those people.

Wait. I take that back. I want to know who those sickos are so I know not to go anywhere near them. You are not making soup out of my skin when you decide to go all Jeffrey Dahmer on folks.

Anyway, I've heard the term cinematic rape thrown around before, but I think this is film that you will find pictured next to the term in the dictionary. All I need to do now is see it in an IMAX theater so I can lose all hope for mankind and pludge head first into a world of darkness and sorrow ...