Rodriguez' brilliant, eye-opening, maddening tale of all things noir and nasty is one of my favourites.

Rating: 10/10 (30 November 2009)

The night comes across as glum; she's pretty, and he's handsome. They stand on a balcony, well dressed and looking smart. She seems scared, he seems allured but the actual reasons for his presence are deeper and more sinister than you'd first think. They look at one another; the male narrates to us how he feels; colours light up, as do the final cigarettes one of the two parties will ever have. The cigarette smoke jostles with the death that is in the air, only we cannot see it just yet. They embrace, and after this fatal exchange we crash backwards off the balcony overlooking a peculiar skyline before zooming out to encompass a bird's eye view of the entire town. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Basin City.
On release, Sin City was a noir like nobody had ever seen before, indeed, I have seen few films since that have come close to matching the film as a whole. The film is a strange mix of down-to-Earth basics and homages to noir mixed with out and out escapism. The film's dynamics see characters shot, stabbed, run-over, blown-up and beaten senseless yet still manage to soldier on; whereas cars can shoot along rainy cliff-side roads at dizzying speeds but maintain on course and in control without ever crashing off. Despite all of this, the film maintains a focus; it sticks to its noir infused guns like nobody's business, delivering three stories of unrelenting passion and energy that unfold in a manner that is respectable enough to most things it takes on; be it difficult subject matter, levels of realism or attitudes to women.
The film is broken up into three tales of respective men in crisis, three tales that you might say are linked by their leads' attitudes and dedication to women. The first, and last since it's revisited later on, sees elderly cop John Hartigan (Willis) involved in a rescue mission before a somewhat taboo romance tale; the second is a frothing mad revenge tale driven by love born out of the respect a woman had for a hulking thug named Marv (Rourke); while the other one is a causality inspired, MacGuffin driven piece detailing the misadventures of a certain Dwight (Owen), as he strives to rid a section of Basin City of a particular object that'll spell disaster for hundreds. Some are more violent than others, some more far-fetched; Hartigan's story is the easiest to latch onto due to its obvious connotations of good vs. pure evil playing out; two stories will end somewhat unhappily and one particular tale will straddle the line that pushes subject matter into the realms of horror. But all three will draw on inspiration from decades of Hollywood noir and deliver powerful, gut-wrenching fables of down and dirty people striving to get by told amidst levels of exciting entertainment and escapism.
Director Robert Rodriguez knows where he's coming from with Sin City. By way of updating a series of graphic novels, littering them with a number of homages and using the latest in computer green-screen technology, he's created something that he will not match for the rest of his career. From the off, the first story entitled That Yellow Bastard is littered with nods and references. Hartigan, the gruff talking and close to down-and-out cop, drives his car down a straight road although needlessly twists his steering wheel in what instantly calls to mind 1945's Detour, amongst many other B-movie noirs, and their dodgy backdrops. A few miles away, a young healthy girl named Nancy sits tied to a chair, scared witless, as a door opens and Rodriguez tosses in that element of expressionism as a creepy and evil being casts a shadow over the wall, perhaps calling to mind Fritz Lang's 1931 film M. Later on, we will come to understand the Sunset Blvd. reference Rodriguez was, like that respective film, playing us with the whole time.
On another strand, we're told Marv was unlucky to be born in the wrong century thanks to his uncanny ability to reach distressing levels of violence. This plants some dangerous seeds in our minds as to what he's capable of. We don't get to see him in a Roman arena, swinging an axe into some other gladiator's head, but later on we get to see him swing a hatchet into a corrupt police officer's. Marv is a human tank; a self-identified border-line psychopath whose tale tiptoes over the border that separates noir from horror, all for sake of Goldie (King), a lowlife hooker that made Marv feel important and wanted. Rodriguez will have him struggle (as he will Dwight in the tar-pits) in the rural farm setting before breaking trend and have him come to dominate this locale. The punishment Marv takes throughout is reminiscent to that of those 1980s Hollywood action stars, and how their bodies would be beaten and bashed and put through a grinder.
Dwight is one-part mockingly, one-part knowingly referred to as 'Lancelot' in his story entitled The Big Fat Kill, since his role as protector to domestic abuse victim Shellie (Murphy) might see him as a knight in shining armour. Later on, he becomes a knight of sorts to Old Town based dominatrix Gail (Dawson) and the rest of her red-light district girls when a group of dangerously sexually active men enter the fray; their sexual appetites costing them their lives by Japanese bodyguard Miho (Aoki) and her phallic samurai sword. But the film is not all men protecting women by way of holding their hand. Indeed, it explores the lengths certain men are willing to go for the female and Shellie's and Nancy's repeated attempts to stand up to their male aggressors in Jackie Boy and The Yellow Bastard, respectively, see them more than mere objects that need saving. Sin City is one of my favourites of the decade; a whirling, spinning experience of a film – the likes of which all should see.