Sin City
Review by Peter T. Chattaway | posted 4/01/2005
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Between the Spy Kids and El Mariachi franchises—to say nothing of his work on the original From Dusk Till Dawn—Robert Rodriguez has been making live-action cartoons for so long, it was probably only a matter of time before he made a live-action comic book.
Bruce Willis as Hartigan
Sin City is based on a series of graphic novels (from Dark Horse Comics) written and drawn by Frank Miller, and it is difficult to imagine a director better suited to Miller's pulpy, anarchistic style than Rodriguez. Miller may work on more mainstream titles from time to time—recent comic-book movies like Elektra (based on a character created by Miller) and the upcoming Batman Begins (inspired, in part, by Miller's classic Batman: Year One storyline) definitely bear his imprint—but the independently produced Sin City arguably captures Miller's sleazy, sadomasochistic cynicism in its purest form. There is a wildness, a craziness, to Miller's stories that bleeds—no, sprays—off the page, and whatever else we might say about this film, Rodriguez does capture that element very well.
Although this movie makes good use of the sax-heavy music and world-weary narration that are common in film noir, Rodriguez's mostly black-and-white visuals are influenced more by Miller's original comics than by any cinematic conventions. The blood—and there is a lot of blood here—is given the red spot-color treatment on some occasions, while on others it looks like bird droppings, a patch of white against someone's black coat. In at least one scene, someone stands against a brick wall and, in the shadow, we see not simply a darker version of the rest of the wall, but more of a reverse image—dark bricks with white lines between them. And the city itself looks like a monochromatic variation on those all-digital sets we saw a few months ago in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Clive Owen as Dwight and Benicio Del Toro as Jackie-Boy
But there is one crucial way in which Sin City, the film, is not like Sin City, the comics. Each of the original stories was meant to be digested on its own, but the film strings several of them together, and the cumulative effect of sitting through so many grim, morbid, hyperviolent tales is numbing to the soul. You can only introduce, and then bump off, so many protagonists before it gets a bit wearying. And that's before we take into account the sheer repetition of all the dismemberings, beheadings, and wounds to the male groin.
Some actors fit very well into this milieu, others less so. Mickey Rourke, of all people, is the stand-out as Marv, the ugly brute who is framed for the murder of a hooker named Goldie (Jaime King) who gave herself to him for free; he then tortures and kills as many people as it takes to avenge her death. I was startled and worried for Rourke when I saw the remake of Get Carter five years ago—it looked like he had taken enough steroids to kill a stable full of horses—but in this film, he's one of the few actors who wears prosthetics on his face, and the added bit of freakishness actually helps to make him more sympathetic and human.
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