Movie Info

Sin City - "Hell of a way to end a partnership."

As a comic book fan, I am well aware of Frank Miller's work. I was not introduced to Frank Miller until after his Daredevil run at Marvel Comics. Miller's work on DC's The Dark Knight Returns made me a Frank Miller fan instantly. I began picking up his Sin City comic books and was hooked on his art and his experimental storytelling. Miller's Sin City was published by Dark Horse Comics and was definitely targeted towards mature audiences. Violence, drugs and sex, Sin City lives up to its name.

When I heard that a Sin City movie was going to be made, I was hesitant at first. I wasn't sure how the style from the books could be faithfully translated into a movie, especially a big budget Hollywood movie. Enter Robert Rodriguez. Obviously a fan of Frank Miller's work, Rodriguez decided to visually adapt the Sin City movie to reflect the comic book themselves. He shot the entire movie like a comic book and the results are amazing. Rodriguez took many panels from the comic book and translated them into shots for the film. He took dialogue straight from the comic books and made sure the all-star cast look almost identical to their comic book counterparts.

Rodriguez and Miller took the stories from "Sin City", "The Big Fat Kill" and "That Yellow Bastard" and combined them to create the storylines for this movie. So in essence, it's actually three plotlines in one movie. Almost like "Pulp Fiction", where characters are interconnected with each other.

Miller's Sin City takes place in the fictional Basin City. Basin City is a corrupt city where criminals rule. The police, politicians and even religious leaders are all corrupt. Miller's protagonists are dark characters that are criminals themselves, but each has some moral standard that they abide by; which in Basin City, makes them a hero of sorts. You have Marv (played by an unrecognizable Mickey Rourke), who is basically a big thug, looking for revenge; Hartigan (Bruce Willis), a good cop on a corrupt force, trying to save a little girl's life; Dwight (Clive Owen), a criminal that has a sense of chivalry for those he loves. Sin City is about these characters and what it takes for them to survive in Basin City.

The acting is great in Sin City. Each actor portrayed their respective roles with great precision. To me, it's pretty hard to deliver some of those comic book lines without looking silly. The voiceovers during the movie reminded me of the narrative text books in the comic books. There is a lot of top-notch talent in this movie and many had small parts, but they still contributed to the overall effect of the movie. From Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro) to Manute (Michael Duncan Clarke) to the chilling Kevin (Elijah Wood), the casting director did an amazing job of getting the right actors for the part and the makeup artists did an equally impressive job of making the actors look the part.

Where the men of Sin City are the hoodlums and cutthroats of Basin City, the women are the angels. That is, angels with guns, swords and a killer attitude. The women are mostly prostitutes that protect their turf. They even have a female ninja called Miho (Devon Aoki). In his comic books, Frank Miller draws his women as voluptuous and sexy and generously provides nude scenes to add to the atmosphere of Basin City. With Brittany Murphy, Jessica Alba, Jaime King, and Rosario Dawson cast, Rodriguez manages to capture that sexuality onscreen. It's a shame that only Jaime King got naked for the movie. Alba was reported to have volunteered to do her scenes naked, but Rodriguez refused. Damn you Robert Rodriguez! Guess we just have to wait for the sequel.

I absolutely loved this movie. It's definitely on the top of my list of DVDs to purchase. Although I have spoken to other people and it seems that the movie is a "love it or hate it" movie. Some embraced the style of the movie and enjoyed the over-acting while some abhorred the gratuitous violence throughout the movie. I think moviegoers should see the movie regardless as it's something different from what is being offered by mainstream Hollywood. You might hate it, you might love it. Just watch it.

Dragoncrypt