Sin City and V for Vendetta

We recently got Sin City out from Netflix. We also went to our local cinema to see V for Vendetta this afternoon.

Sin City

Mickey Rourke and Jaime King
in Sin City

If you liked Kill Bill (Vol 1; Vol 2), Pulp Fiction and film noir, you're bound to like Sin City. I have to confess that I have never read any of Frank Miller's Sin City comic books.

Has this film made me want to read them?

Well, yes and no. The excellence of the creation that is Basin City and the stories that occur within it make me want to go straight to Amazon and buy the lot. However, I am not one who can cope with too much violence. Even though the film was mostly shot in black and white; even though the most violent parts were animated; and even though blood was most often depicted using white (although sometimes red or yellow); I still spent at least half the time flinching and/or turning away from the screen. I might have turned it off, if not for the fact that the narrative was so compelling.

What did Mark think? -- He was just happy that it had Jessica Alba in it.

You might like to know that Sin City 2 is in the pipeline. There are also rumours of a TV series, but I haven't found any news on this that is post-November-2005.

V for Vendetta

V (Hugo Weaving)

It's not often that I get to see a film on its release date, so I was pleased to be able to see V for Vendetta yesterday. You may recall my telling you that I had read the book years ago, as a teenager.

Thankfully, I'm not familiar enough with the book for minor nuances to be able to spoil my enjoyment of the film. As far as I was concerned, the film looked right. Most importantly, V looked right. The rest fell into place. The film was one of the best films I've seen in a long time.

A lot of reviewers have been whinging on about how the hero (V) is a terrorist and how inappropriate this is in this day and age ... Etcetera. This is because they are watching it in a post September the 11th world, when the story was actually first published in 1982-5. There are two types of masked heroes. There are Superman, Batman, Spiderman and all the heroes of Astro City, who catch the baddies and hand them over to the police and the full force of the law. The other kind are the vigilantes -- the ones who hunt down and kill the baddies and anyone who gets in their way. Examples that spring to mind, just off the top of my head, include The Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Matrix and The Authority.

OK, so they blow up the houses of parliament, but in the V for Vendetta alternate universe, the government are the baddies. The story is just as much a story about V's quest for vengeance against a government who has wronged him personally as it is about his liberating the people from the said oppressive government. We don't have to agree with V or with his methods for the novel to be a cracking-good read and for the film to be excellent.

(By the way, I like the way John Hurt, who was Winston Smith in 1984, is the despot in this film.)