Sin City was excellent. I’ll avoid spoilering, and just say that I’d definitely call it the most successfully comicky adapation of a comic book I’ve seen yet. Not having READ “Sin City” I can’t say how close to the source material it ran, but it looked comic booky, and the dialogue had that slightly absurd, hard-boiled detective novel flavor,* and it was, of course, a splatterfest.

They tried twice, with intensive makeup, to make people really LOOK like a comic book character. It’s a hit or miss thing–this time, one hit, one miss. The first time was great. The profile had this clean sweeping line to it that really LOOKED like a drawing. The second one, alas, just looked somewhat silly and bright yellow, but that was the only major flaw in what was otherwise a really visually daring style. I was impressed.

And just about the point that I was thinking “Okay, all these stories so far have involved women getting killed by psychopaths, and if a chick doesn’t start kicking ass soon, I’m gonna get a little pissy–” they introduced a whole bunch of hookers with guns and swords, and all is right with the cosmos.

However, I am left with one burning question…

When did Rutger Hauer get so old?

I realize that you see an actor in a movie, then you don’t see ’em for awhile, and you’re always a little shocked. Since I hadn’t seen him in anything since…oh, probably Ladyhawk or Blade Runner, (I’m told I haven’t missed much) my mental image went from “The android with the sword and the giant black horse, right?” to “DEAR GOD, IT’S THE CRYPT-KEEPER!” That threw me a tad. But other than that, good flick.

Now I wanna play Shadowrun again. *sob*

*As opposed to the Star Wars trailer they ran, which dialogue had that “I have no idea how people actually talk” flavor…