Sin City
Dimension Films | Release Date: April 1, 2005 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
74
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
30
Mixed:
8
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)Ken Tucker
The visually stunning Sin City has grit to spare and a thrilling undercurrent of morality. Read full review
100
TimeRichard Corliss
Sin City is brazenly, thrillingly alive. Read full review
100
Washington PostDesson Thomson
It's a guaranteed must-see for its generation. Sin City has a long, long shelf life ahead. Read full review
100
SlateDavid Edelstein
I loved it. Or, to put it another way, I loved it, I loved it, I loved it. I loved every gorgeous sick disgusting ravishing overbaked blood-spurting artificial frame of it. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
This isn't an adaptation of a comic book, it's like a comic book brought to life and pumped with steroids. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
A movie unlike any other. Read full review
100
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Two hours and six minutes has never seemed so much like two and six-tenths seconds. It's pure pulp metafiction. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Some things in Sin City are almost too much to watch: the violence, the cruelty, the irredeemable evil. But it's irresistibly magnetic because it serves as a barely distorted mirror to our world. Read full review
90
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Sin City is the first mainstream American picture I've seen this year that feels even remotely brash or original. It's a hard, viciously funny little movie, one with all the subtlety of a billy club. But there's artistry here. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Honestly, this ultra-noir adaptation of Frank Miller's black-and-white cult comic series is a visual feast ripped straight from the original medium's blood-soaked pages. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The most visually inventive comic book adaptation to make its way to a movie screen. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Sin City is an evil place, full of awful people, an obsessive movie full of monomaniacal tough guys. Yet when Miller and Rodriguez move it into gear, noir lives. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The worst thing I can say about this savage, sexy and ferociously funny screen translation of three stories from Frank Miller's Sin City series of graphic novels is that it's too much of a good thing. Read full review
88
USA TodayMike Clark
Occasionally very funny, the picture tends to coast on its cosmetics. A first-rate script might have made it a twisted masterpiece. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Tarantino may have nicked the title first, but this is the real ''Pulp Fiction," with all the drama and the dead ends that implies. Read full review
88
PremiereAaron Hillis
A rough-and-tumble magnum opus of digital filmmaking that thrillingly basks in the sick, slick, sexy and quick-witted excesses of its imaginatively mutant stylizations. Read full review
80
VarietyTodd McCarthy
For geeks, action freaks and sensation-seeking teenage boys of all ages, the price of admission will provide a one-way ticket to hard-boiled heaven. Read full review
80
NewsweekDevin Gordon
It's gory stuff, but it's also a visually arresting blitzkrieg with action so bare-knuckled you'll leave the theater spitting out teeth. Read full review
80
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Sin City draws on the cumulative history of both mediums, creating a pastiche that would have been technologically impossible even three years ago. Its creators invent a queasily intoxicating new world. Read full review
80
Dallas ObserverRobert Wilonsky
Rodriguez clearly assumes Sin City to be his "Pulp Fiction," his rambling portmanteau--a blending of disparate tales to form a complete, overwhelming epic. Read full review
80
Film ThreatKJ Doughton
Rodriguez slams down the sledgehammer with so much brutal, punishing force, there's no room to breathe. Read full review
80
EmpireKim Newman
For the guys it's Rodriguez's best film by far and a treat for fans of good-looking girls in black-and-white, of classic film noir and of imaginative ultra-violence. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Sin City snaps, crackles and pops like no graphic novel ever brought to the screen. Mixing live-action with computer-generated images, it looks like the novels, talks and bleeds like the novels, is as muscular and voluptuous as the novels - and it leaves you breathless as only a movie can. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
This is noir on steroids, cartoonishly ultra-violent and drawing inspiration from Mickey Spillane novels and E.C. comics of the '50s. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Sin City gives sin a great name -- it's never been more plentiful or looked so gorgeous. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
Sin City has been made with such scrupulous care and obvious love for its genre influences that it's a shame the movie is kind of a bore. Read full review
70
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
But once you're good and drunk on the look, details like the tin-eared tough-guy dialogue (which sounds especially stilted issuing from flesh-and-blood mouths) don't seem so important. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Rodriguez's evident delight in the form make this a worthwhile piece of eye candy. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Sin City is always moving on to the next thing, and despite surprisingly good work from its large cast (especially Rourke and Owen, who are both outstanding), the picture feels synthetic and artificial. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerDan DeLuca
To say that Sin City is a guy movie - and an often brutally misogynist one, at that - would be an understatement. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Glued tightly from page to screen, Sin City is so seduced by the visual possibilities of sin that style becomes its own vice. Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
After half an hour spent drooling over its visual splendors, I found the movie every bit as sickening as its creators intended it to be, minus the kicks they so palpably got out of making it. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
For a relentlessly violent and exploitive noir knockoff, Sin City is mystifyingly flat and static - cartoonish, even, if you want to get tautological about it. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Mr. Rourke's performance is quite phenomenal, a case of unquenchable talent bursting the bonds of dehumanized artifice.
50
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Sin City is a seedy tribute to rugged masculinity disguised as a rogue's gallery, all the better to please college boys who like their sentimentality slicked with grunge. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
What binds and clads the new movie most thoroughly, however, is not storytelling but the high pressure of atmosphere. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Eye-popping yet ultimately thin and shallow as a page in a graphic novel. Read full review
40
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Sin City lacks the human interest, not to be confused with humanism, that "Pulp Fiction" had in abundance. As if to underscore the fact, Tarantino guest-directed a scene. It's readily recognizable as the only one in which the dialogue has the slightest conviction. Read full review
25
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Everything here has been done better in other books, other movies. The lone remarkable thing is the level of violence, which exposes the cowardice and hypocrisy of the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings system. Read full review
0
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The attainment it achieves is in the depths of pointless, mean-spirited exploitation. Read full review
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