"Sin City" - Digitalized violence, film-noir, steroids, and comic book greatness!

Rating: 10/10 (18 August 2005)

"Sin City," directed by one of the greatest directorial trifectas - Robert Rodriguez, "Sin City" graphic novel creator Frank Miller and special guest director Quentin Tarantino - is a visually stunning and breathtaking piece of film-noir graphic novel, cinematic greatness on steroids.
By and large, this is what a movie based on a comic book should be. It's flawlessly adapted from the source material, with only a few slight changes (presumably to avoid the more explicit contents of the original comic book) and many of Miller's panels come to life on the screen through Rodriguez's skillfully placed camera. Comic book movies represent one of the remaining avenues for truly original film-making, and "Sin City" takes full advantage of its digitalized violence and groundbreaking CGI vainglory. And the cast (and what a cast!) brings the shady, corrupt characters to life, along with the amoral Basin City metropolis they inhabit.
As a newbie reader of Miller's work on "Sin City," I was amazed at the care that went into Rodriguez's attention to the story as it unfolded on the screen. As mentioned earlier, the visuals are lifted right out of the original "Sin City" graphic novel panels, so audience members would not have to be readers themselves to understand what's going on.
Although the world of "Sin City" exists through seven transversal story arcs, the film primarily focuses in on Miller's three tales "The Hard Goodbye," "The Big Fat Kill," and "That Yellow Bastard." It's brutal, it's violent, it's vicious, it's beautiful, and it's sinful. The events in "Sin City" kickoff after a brief narration by The Man (Josh Hartnett)...
In "The Hard Goodbye," a hulking, hard-luck loser named Marv (Mickey Rourke, under about 15 pounds of prosthetic makeup) wakes up in the bed of a run-down motel room with a dead prostitute laying next to him. The hooker, identified by Marv as Goldie (Jaime King), apparently picked him up in a seedy bar and showed him the time of his life. But, somehow, someway, somebody sneaked into the room and offed her while she slept, and Marv, framed for the murder, now scours the streets and alleys for her killer.
This is my favorite of the three, as "The Hard Goodbye" was the first "Sin City" graphic novel I picked up at Barnes & Noble Booksellers a few months ago. Rourke is a total bad-ass as Marv, virtually unrecognizable underneath such heavy-duty prosthetics and bandages. He eventually finds his quarry, Kevin (Elijah Wood), a nerd-looking, silent psychopath who kills women, eats them, and hangs their heads on the wall. Rutger Hauer co-stars as Cardinal Roark and a scantily-clad Carla Gugino also appears as Marv's lesbian parole officer, Lucille.
In "The Big Fat Kill," corrupt cop Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro) is about to break down the door of his stripper lover Shellie (Brittany Murphy). What Jackie Boy doesn't know, is Shellie has a new man in her life, and that man is Dwight (Clive Owen). Dwight is a wanted murderer who underwent plastic surgery and has found unlikely love with the hardened Shellie. Well, to make long stories short, all hell breaks loose when Jackie Boy and his lackeys wander into the wrong part of town and are killed by chop-soki swordswoman Miho (Devon Aoki).
In this part of the city, known as Old Town, the whores are their own enforcers as they have an uneasy truce with the corrupt police. But with Jackie Boy and his loser friends getting wasted, that truce has gone bye-bye. Gail (the luscious, the leather-and-chain-bound Rosario Dawson) is the leader, and Dwight formulates a plan to dump the bodies into the distant tar pits. But between getting there, narrowly evading the cops (including Michael Clarke Duncan) and assorted foreign mercenaries and his own stupidity, each of these almost prove to be Dwight's undoing.
Oh, wow, where to begin. For starters, Rosario Dawson!!! I never knew this woman could look so hot in S&M, not that I'm into that sort of thing, but damn, I at least partially bought this just to see her in leather and chains. As Dwight, Clive Owen hits all the right notes as an outsider anti-hero in way over his head, and Devon Aoki is pretty vicious as Miho, who serves up some delectable sushi bad guys with the same swords used in the "Kill Bill" films. But "The Big Fat Kill" is big, bloody, and fun.
"That Yellow Bastard" is the only one of the three I haven't read (not that it really matters), so I have to go on what the movie says. The yellow bastard in question is an unrecognizable Nick Stahl as Roark Jr., the psychopathic son of Senator Roark (Powers Boothe). He's racked up a nasty reputation on the Basin City streets as a vicious serial killer who loves to torture women, and his latest target is stripper Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba). Hartigan (Bruce Willis), one of the only honest cops left in the city, has a bad heart and little patience for incompetence, which only intensifies when he is stopped by his partner Bob (Michael Madsen) from killing Roark Jr. and is then sentenced to a lengthy prison term. Hartigan escapes, and then goes after Roark Jr., who is setting his sights once again on the innocent Nancy.
"Sin City" is already one of the most talked-about films this year. It's definitely not for the faint-of-heart, as the stylized and incredibly bloody violence should ruffle a few feathers. The numerous unsavory characters are truly right out of a comic book, as they make no attempt to rise above their amoral existences in Miller's decadent Basin City.
There are few heroes in "Sin City" and there are even fewer identifiable characters, but there's no two ways about it: "Sin City" is a visual masterpiece, a pumped-up comic book come to life on steroids, and is one of the best movies I've seen this year.
10/10