Sin City

I’m not sure where to begin with this review. I can’t decide if I liked the movie or not. What I can say about the film is that it was bold and visually intense and very very violent. But the film does stay with you, not just the images but the vignettes and the people who are trapped in stories much larger than their own. Sin City is the latest work of director jack-of-all-trades Robert Rodriguez. His previous two films Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Desperado were not only directed by him but also filmed and edited. Sin City is no different as the credits unceremoniously attest, ’shot and cut by Robert Rodriguez’. It is refreshing to see someone who can not only do it himself, but doesn’t glorify it with a million trumped up titles. This may get Rodriguez into a bit of trouble with the guild, who likes to see everything and everyone credited just so, but that is the price you pay for individuality. Of course Rodriguez alone could not bring this film to fruition. This film relies so heavily on the graphic novels of Frank Miller that he is given a co-directing credit as so much of the film was framed to match his drawings. Of course the film also gets a boost by featuring a Quentin Tarantino directed sequence but I think the addition of the Tarantino moniker may do the film more harm than good.

Of course anyone expecting a Quentin Tarantino movie may end up disappointed. True there are a sufficient number of unlikeable hit men and other nefarious peoples and the violence quotient is very high, but there is no witty Tarantino dialogue to carry the film. The film is filled with noir-ish voiceovers and many times the characters are relegated to less than witty one-liners. I realize these stories are based off of a comic book, but at times you can almost see the cartoon bubble over the actors’ heads. Of course this is probably the weakest part of the movie because otherwise the film is a majestically beautiful film with solid acting performances from its mainly B-list stars.

Sin City is a stunningly visual film brilliant in its depiction of a city full of crime and criminals. The film was shot with a galaxy of name actors in front of a green screen and it shows how far the medium has come. Though the underrated Sky Captain created a world of light airiness and WWII villains with the same technique; in Sin City the film technique is given free reign to take over the film experience wand present a city full of darkness and foreboding. In the Sin City world many times the green of eyes or the red of blood are the only colors that register in the frames. In Sin City blood comes in many colors, white, red, or yellow depending on whether it comes from a person, is splattered, or medicinally altered. Not only does this add the surreal element to the graphic violence but it also mirrors how the graphic novels manage to present so much violence in its printed medium.

There are three stories to the film Sin City. These three are told in chronological order individually but they are juxtaposed in time in relation to each other. The first story is split in half and provides a frame for the film. First there is a short vignette with Josh Hartnett, as The Man, and his beautiful if unfortunate customer, a lovely lady in a red dress who gets kissed then killed. The scene sets the tone for the film, voiceovers and sex and violence. Next we meet Hartigan one of the few good people in Sin City. Hartigan is a straight cop with a bad heart who is on the heels of a child murderer. Unfortunately this child murderer Junior, played by Nick Stahl happens to be the only son of a crooked senator named Rourk. He and his brother the cardinal run the city and allow all sorts of corrupt pratices. Hartigan shoots the bad guy and saves a little girl named Nancy from unspeakable torture by Junior and then is promptly shot in the back by his partner. Later Hartigan reemerges, from prison where the senator has sent him as the child molester, to find Nancy and protect her from further harm. Junior has resurfaced as well, this time as a luridly yellow villain known as The Bastard. The vivid chase and the attention to detail make this an interesting story mainly about the motivation of Hartigan and Nancy. About what keeps them going and what keeps them together, it is really a moving character story if you get past the beatings and the bullets and the genital mutilation.

The second story is perhaps more interesting but it also seems to have a lot more loose ends. A thug named Marv, played by a heavily made up Mickey Rourke, wakes up next to a dead prostitute and decides to seek revenge upon those who killed her, truly a grim proposition for all of those opposed to the beefy Marv. Now Marv didn’t really know the girl, but she was nice to him so that gives him enough motivation for a bloody rampage. First he evades police, checks in with his lesbian parole officer, then he is off to beating up hired muscle. His trip eventually takes him to a farmhouse where a silent madman named Kevin, played eerily by Elijah Wood, eats women while still alive. Of course the man bankrolling all of this is a much bigger fish and so Marv continues his spree long after finding the killer, why I’m not sure. Plus, this murder’s MO was twofold, one that he took only prostitutes, and two that he ate them. Neither of which explains why he kills the prostitute at the beginning but doesn’t harm the body and two why he goes after Marv’s parole officer. But there is a lot of action and a lot of blood, of both the red and white variety, and the story is compelling as is the acting.

The third story revolves around Dwight, Clive Owen, and is perhaps the weakest of the three. Dwight is a murderer with a new face who follows a creep named Jackie Boy into Old Town after the guy beats up on his old girlfriend. Benecio DelToro plays the creep and his is an interesting part mainly because he gets the best lines and scenes after he gets killed. Jackie Boy goes after the wrong girl on the wrong night and ends up getting killed by some vigilante prostitutes. The only problem, Jackie Boy was a police officer. Dwight then has to spend the rest of the night trying to salvage the delicate cease fire between the police, the prostitutes, and the mob. Of course this part does include the Asian assassin Miho, Devon Aoki, as well as the Quentin Tarantino directed scene of Jackie Boy’s murder all of which are visually stunning and make me want to watch Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2 again. The scene in the car between Del Toro and Owen is great and is Tarantino-esque though the conversation is really only with one character. Unfortunately the rest of the story devolves in to cliche one liners like ‘My Valkyrie goddess’ or ‘She’s an angel. She’s Mother Teresa. She is Elvis.’ It is in this story that the poor dialogue really shows through and the film just ends up being a shootout between the prostitutes and the mob. The whole story just feels like an excuse to show a group of scantily clad beautiful women. Of course Rosario Dawson does a good job holding her own as the leader of the prostitutes in a man’s world, but there just isn’t enough to the story to carry it along.

Well into the second part of the Hartigan story you realize that you have seen all of this already. Perhaps today’s audience is not as blase to cinematic violence as I think they are but before the movie is over you think, how many more beatings and gunfights are there going to be? Rodriguez has done a credible job of bringing the graphic novel vision to the screen. The film is so accurate that Frank Miller receives not only a writing credit but a directing credit and it has become a game to match shots from the film with the comic panels that they pertain to. The problem is that the film often goes for style over substance, not a sin in and of itself, but it would have been nice to see a bit more thought put into what the characters are saying and doing not just how they look. Perhaps it is the association with Tarantino that does the picture in, there are great expectations for the characterization and dialogue that go along with the Tarantino tagline and Sin City doesn’t deliver. What it does deliver is an enjoyable though somewhat squirm inducing time. Be advised that this film glorifies its violence and indeed hangs it characters as indifferent, bad, or really bad. There are no happy endings for those in the big city, but it could be a lot worse.