City Of Violence DVD

Advantages: Acting, effects, plot
Disadvantages: lack of special features

...2005 brought with it many great movies and many pretty crap movies but one of the best has to be Sin City. Boasting a cast list of over a dozen 'A' list stars and the tagline, "Walk down the right back alley in Sin City and you can find anything" it was known this was a movie not to be missed. Hearing many mixed reviews about this film I decided not to go to the cinema to see it but wait until Katy bought it on DVD. So when she got it we sat down and watched two hours of pure brilliance. Sin City has also brought around a generation of adapting graphic novels. Sin City had many stories all written by Frank Miller and now film makers want their own piece of the action. The plot of this film is a little difficult to describe as it consists of three different stories that sometimes interlink within one another. Hartigan is a cop, one... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Fantastic return to film noir, in your face, stylised violence with a new cool, great direction
Disadvantages: Slightly too long, poor extras, lack of character storyline development

...*** This review has been written for the DVD review competition, I thought I'd try something different to give a more diverse take on the generic opinions you can read. My views come through the main consciousness of Hartigan, one of the main characters of the film, who in my own fictitious plot has been locked in a room with the film as his predicted clue to freedom. The style of the review mirrors the film, with many scenes having voiceovers of the actors replacing spoken word to get its ideas across. *** Keep watching old man, keep watching. Just another long night in Sin City. My heart quickens as I struggle for breath, the smell of a bloody wound filling my nostrils is overpowering and unwelcome. Not a sound. No sign of life. Confusion reigns and thoughts swim congealed, like the gash on my head. Only the faint glimmer... Read review

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Advantages: Gritty realism, strong acting, and impressive inter-woven narratives
Disadvantages: Subtitled so may put some viewers off

...Meirelles 'City of God' is a film with intense social realism in which the 'true' story if you will of life in Brazil's most notorious favela (slum) is presented. The main characters for this film are those of the character who provides the omniscient voiceover narrative role of Rocket, played by Alexandre Rodrigues, and that of L'il Dice (Douglas Silva) who later in the film becomes L'il Ze (Leandro Firmino) as he gets older. In the favela, people often have to resort to crime in the form of violence and drugs in order to try and get out of the favela and make a proper life for themselves. This film is one which presents this idea, with Meirelles showing that it is no easy task to make a life for yourself away from the crime of the favela. This film presents two extremely different protagonists that in many respects can be seen to be binary... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful