#4- Sin City Back Alley Poker Pack

God I love the booze, the broads and the bullets. It really hits a nerve to see all the darkness glowing on the tube, like its right out of a sleazy theater where every comes to meet for reasons that dont involve the movie. Where else would they go to indulge in their trashy fantasies?

Sin City is a world that is not sealed by plastic, nor caught in a container. It has been touched, abused, beat up, stepped on and kicked around like a 2-bit whore. But the difference about this city is that it keeps getting up to go after its tormenter for revenge. After watching Sin City, for the first time, the Recut - Extended - Unrated version, I realized the packaging for the Back Alley Poker Pack was all wrong. It is trapped in a plastic box that is clumsy to hold and carry, held down by the burden of a pack of playing cards and a roll of casino chips showing off the Sin City logo. Even the extended versions had little to do with gambling. No, as I said - booze, broads and bullets. None of that present in the extras of this set. I would prefer the broads, but I will settle for the booze and bullets.

  Just like the life in the dark world, when you pull out its contents, it seems as if everything that holds it together is falling apart. Taking out the DVD package itself was like a wrestling match between all the little wedges of plastic holding it in place. Once its free, you unwrap the factory seal for a 2-disc set and a comic book. I watched the movie. Three times. Then I read the comic. Thats like watching the movie for the fourth time. I think its that good. I haven't even touched the playing cards or the casino coins. I don't know if I want to.

It's on the DVD set that I played around the most. Getting lost in the world of moral rights and wrongs. Where politics is corrupt and evil has a heart. Its when you start watching the behind-the-scenes commercials you start to wonder if life in Sin City is better in front of the camera or behind the camera. Everyone thanking Frank for his writing and helping out in the direction. Rodriguez continually denying his ownership of the film in favor of Frank. Tarentino who wants to do it his own way, but cant and so is stuck in the middle somewhere, unsure of how to congratulate himself. And Frank happy everything went his way. So where to? The audio commentary of all these guys would be too much for the fragile ego of the regular class. Your best bet - the audio inclusion of the audience participation at the premiere in Texas. Yeah, thats where I belong. Yelling and screaming and clapping for every moment of justice done to the baddies. Cheering on the performances with the rest of the low lives. Now that I have filled myself with all of the Sin City I could take in the last few days, I am left with a final question: What do I do with this other crap? A pack of cards and a few chips. I dont even gamble. I'll sell it on eBay in the morning. (queue theme song)

Conclusion

• This set looks nice on the rack. Its weighty and feels important, like it outta. Solid and heavy like steel in your hands. But when you strip away the flimsy packaging and the few extra items, you are left with the DVD set, which is available anyways. The set up of the "Unrated" version is not a full length feature, but rather it puts all of the stories together so you watch them uninterrupted by the other stories. In other words, The Hard Goodbye is played in its entirety. The Yellow Bastard is played in its entirety. Those are on the second disc. The first disc is just the rated version with the audio commentaries. Some of the features on the second disc are interesting, more entertaining than the usual fare. I like the feature of showing how the characters connect in the different stories, but navigation is slow. The set does not give anything the other DVD does not already offer. Although, I must admit the images on the cards are cool and the casino chips are of the same quality in a real casino. I am impressed with that. Otherwise I am not really fond of the set as a whole. The plastic is annoying to me. The price tag weighs a little bit more than the product. The chips are down.

   

• Package Design: C

• Package Quality: C+

• Pacakge Content: B

• Collectibility: C-