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I first heard that Robert Rodriguez was going to make a "Sin City"
movie, my first reaction went something along the lines of, "Yeah, right,
it's impossible. They'll never be able to duplicate Miller's vision. And if they
tried, they'll just foul it up something awful." Oh how wrong I was!
Rodriguez, whose movies have always seemed like the works of a very competent
hack (but a hack nonetheless), has not only translated Frank Miller's graphic
novels to the screen with absolute perfection, but "Sin City" might go
down in history as the most faithful movie adaptation of a comic book ever.
It is that spot on.
More of an anthology than a single movie, "Sin
City" tells the tale of Basin City's lowlife denizens, including but not
limited to rough-and-tumble backroom brawler Marv (Mickey Rourke), shady good
guy Dwight (Clive Owen), and Hartigan (Bruce Willis), who might just be the only
honest cop in the entire Basin City police force. The film opens by telling how
Hartigan, on the verge of retirement from the force, takes on one last mission
to save 11-year old Nancy Callahan from the clutches of vile rapist/murderer
Nick Stahl. With Hartigan shot to pieces and left for dead (this happens a lot
to "Sin City's" three heroes), the movie switches over to Marv, and
how he came to spend one glorious night with hot blonde Goldie (Jaime King)
before she is murdered in his bed, and Marv set up to take the fall. Determined
to find Goldie's killer, Marv's ruthless and bloody search leads him to the
highest reaches of Sin City's power stronghold. The third tale involves Dwight,
who takes on the plight of Old Town's prostitute citizenry, led by the fiery
S&M hooker Gail (Rosario Dawson), as they defend themselves from the mob.
At over two hours, "Sin City" makes use of every
single second to weave its three stories, with Hartigan's story beginning in the
past and finishing up in the present. Hartigan, Marv, and Dwight never actually
meet, except for quick transitional sequences in a bar (called
"saloon" in the film) where an adult Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba)
dances as a stripper. The film is replete with voiceover narration where
characters provide pulpy exposition about various things, as well as stretching
analogies as far as they will go. And although the movie's trailer tries to sell
that the three main characters eventually hook up to do battle, it's not so, as
Dwight, Marv, and Hartigan always ends up as the lonely avenger against an army
of crooked cops, crooked politicians, and crooked clergy. Hey, they don't call
it "Sin City" for nothing, you know.
As an adaptation of Frank Miller's "Sin City"
graphic novels, the movie version is right on the money. Legend has it that
Rodriguez, so determined to make the film, shot 10 minutes of footage with his
own money as a demo reel to convince the movie's big name stars to come onboard.
His hard work and dedication clearly pays off, as "Sin City" is a
visual treat, with dazzling imagery and some hair-raising action sequences. It's
all extremely over the top and cartoonish in nature, and the bad guys always
seem to shoot the good guys in the shoulder. Not that it matters, as no matter
how many bullets you put in Hartigan and company, they just keep coming back
because, dammit, justice demands it.
It's easy to understand why Rodriguez has credited Frank
Miller as co-director despite the rules of the almighty Director's Guild. Almost
every frame of "Sin City" is influenced by, if not sometimes directly
lifted from, Miller's comic book panels. With the look and feel of the film
dedicated to utter faithfulness to the source material, the actors, even some of
the well-known ones, become the pulp characters that Miller had envisioned. The
gruff Bruce Willis is perfect as the hard-nosed Hartigan, and Mickey Rourke,
wearing heavy prosthetics, is dead on as bruiser Marv. Clive Owen is good as
Dwight, but not as overly impressive as the other two stars. Devon Aoki, as the
lethal swordswoman Miho, actually has more of a presence than Dwight in Dwight's
segment.
Other notable names include Rodriguez mainstay Carla
Gugino in a scene-stealing role as Marv's oft-naked, lesbian, and very sexy
probational officer; Elijah Wood as a deceptively lethal and cannibalistic
serial killer erases all image of Frodo; and a slimy Nick Stahl ("Terminator
3"), covered in yellow cake as the appropriately named Yellow Bastard,
oozes perversion. Less successful is Jessica Alba, who continues the oddball
trend of movie strippers who never does any actual stripping. Which, speaking
purely for the straight men in the audience, is rather disturbing. Let's hope
the trend doesn't carry over to real life.
Not that everything
about "Sin City" works. One does wish that the connection between
Dwight, Hartigan, and Marv could have extended beyond the three men just
happening to go to the same bar at one point or another in the movie's timeline.
The most we get by way of a connection is Dwight commenting on Marv's brute
qualities. Speaking of which, Dwight's story (coming in the middle) is possibly
the weakest of the three. Rodriguez's choice to showcase Dwight's exploits is
Miller's "The Big Fat Kill", when the better choice might have been
"A Dame to Kill For". Besides being a better story, "A Dame"
would also explain why everyone keeps mentioning that Dwight has gotten himself
"a new face". Then again, the answer to this question, as well as
Dwight's tangling with the wicked Ava, would make for an excellent prequel.
From the very first voiceover narration by Josh
Hartnett (playing a hitman whose two kills (and only two scenes in the whole
movie) bookends the film), there's little doubt that "Sin City" is in
the fine old tradition of film noir. If anything, "Sin City" is so up
to its ears in noir that it's impossible to see it as anything resembling
reality, which allows us to accept Hartigan, Dwight, and Marv getting shot
dozens of times and coming back for more. It's in this same spirit of fantasy
that allows us to crack a grin when a character gets electrocuted, but doesn't
die, and instead makes a sly insult to his would-be killers. That's life in Sin
City -- cartoon noir to the extreme.
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