Technology has finally allowed artists like Frank Miller and Stan Lee to bring their visions to the big screen without compromise. Sin City, originally a series of graphic novels, did require navigating Hollywood politics so that Miller and Robert Rodriguez could both be credited as directors. Rodriguez (Desperado, From Dusk Til Dawn, the Spy Kids trilogy) has always preferred to do things his own way–serving as his own scriptwriter, cinematographer, editor and composer, all of which he does here–couldn’t get a rules waiver and resigned from the Director’s Guild rather than cave in!
This movie is very different from any of Lee’s comic superhero stories and you won’t find a single character on or close to the good side of the temptation line. Some try to do good things or for good reasons; Hartigan, the aging cop played by Bruce Willis, is nearly a good guy but he’s too willing to justify his actions with the intended results. Further, X-Men, Spider-Man, Hulk and Fantastic Four are all celebrations in vibrant colors but here everything and everyone is shades of gray with only blood, eyes, a yellow man and the occasional red dress colorful exceptions.
Especially the blood, which is everywhere all the time, so consider yourself warned: Sin City is a gorefest. I don’t watch horror/slasher flicks but I expect few of them exceed this quantity of explicit, gushing mayhem, severed limbs and even a bit of cannibalism. Miller and Rodriguez don’t use humour to lighten the mood either, starting grim and ending with the same.
Plenty of name actors in what’s more a loosely-connected short stories than a feature, many of them playing against type and quite a few barely recognizable. In addition to Willis, the cast includes Jessica Alba as a stripper capable of nearly liquid moves, Jaime King, Rosario Dawson, Devon Aoki, Britanny Murphy, Alexis Bledel, Carla Gugina (one of the older actresses in a featured role but still willing to show her hot naked body), Elijah Wood as a martial arts master who never speaks, Mickey Rourke as a neanderthal muscleman avenging his love’s murder, Michael Madsen, Josh Hartnett, Benecio Del Toro, Clive Owen, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Rutger Hauer and Powers Booth as powerful brothers and a completely unrecognizable Nick Stahl as Booth’s son. Look for Frank Miller as the priest who hears Rourke’s confession.
Honestly, there’s too much blood, misery and a nearly absolute absence of redemption in the movie for my taste, barely alleviated by raising the characters to sort of live cartoons, and I’d have liked a bit more coherence in the plot which Miller and Rodriguez sacrifice to give fans of the original printed version more of it. The elements of a masterwork are otherwise present, great acting, pacing that creates tension, astonishing visuals and intelligent dialog.
recommended