A Noir Exploitation Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (25 April 2005)

Primarily based on three Sin City graphic novels by Frank Miller--The Hard Good-Bye, The Big Fat Kill and That Yellow Bastard--the film tells a non-linear story centered around three primary threads. In the first, Hartigan (Bruce Willis) is a seasoned cop who is about to retire, but not until he saves a girl from Rourk Jr./Yellow Bastard (Nick Stahl). In the second, Marv (Mickey Rourke), a hulking brute of a man who looks a bit like (and has the physical prowess of) Hellboy (2004), tries to track down a woman's killer. And in the third, Dwight (Clive Owen) tries to protect Shellie (Brittany Murphy) from Jackie Boy and his thugs (Benicio Del Toro). Although at first it feels more like an anthology film, writers/directors Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez eventually tie all the threads together in a very clever way.
Sin City is the rare comic book film that should please purist fans of Frank Miller's work as well as viewers who aren't familiar with the comics. It has an incredibly unusual visual style and plot structure, and it is extremely visceral and humorously cynical. Film noir is an obvious influence, as is the gritty, gory and sexy exploitation approach of Quentin Tarantino, who "guest directs" a segment of the film.
Visually, Rodriguez very closely matches Miller's stark black and white style, complete with the exaggerated perspectives and angles typical of comic book art, by shooting his actors digitally in front of green screens. Backgrounds are then put in by computer. A number of shots are identical to panels from Miller's comics. That everything is digital enables a number of fantastical "camera" transitions and an often surreal physics--made most conspicuous in the shots of vintage automobiles that frequently race along a winding, precipitous mountain road (somewhat similar to Los Angeles' Mulholland Drive) high above Sin City, as well as during the frequent bouts of spectacular violence. Both of these aspects are frequently accompanied by splashes of color, ala Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish (1983).
Violence is extremely important in Sin City and it's one aspect where Tarantino's influence, especially his more recent work on the Kill Bill films, is most clear. This is Sin City, after all, so one shouldn't expect characters and behavior that would please the morally conservative right wing in the U.S. Except for Hartigan, even the heroes are wantonly hacking off limbs. Not that Hartigan isn't violent, but his violence is more traditionally retributional against the "immoral". Most of the women in the film are prostitutes, strippers and such, and most are either skimpily dressed or naked. They are also fond of powerful weapons, ala the "Chicks with Guns" segment from Tarantino's Jackie Brown (1997), which itself is rooted in 1970s exploitation films. If that's not enough to get the "Moral Majority" up in arms, my favorite segment--the story of Marv, features a religious leader as the big, cannibalistic villain. And even though Hartigan is the relative "good guy", he ends up in love with a woman whom he first met when she was 6 years old and he was nearing 60.
Surely many of these non-conservative elements will turn off viewers with more delicate sensibilities, and cause some others to search for a more mainstream "moral" message beneath the veneer, as has been done in not a few other reviews. I think there may be subtexts, but I don't think they're necessarily anything mainstream. The subtext is more an exploitation aesthetic taken to an extreme, offering (at least slightly) alternative mores. Sometimes the mainstream (especially the left and pacifist-leaning side) gets wrapped up in believing that everything must serve their desired message or be damned. Art shouldn't only have one kind of ideology behind it. It should say challenging things. I believe that's more the message of Sin City, if indeed there is one, than any kind of damnation of ethical anarchy or violence through an exaggerated, parable-like example.
With such a huge cast, one would think that Sin City would quickly become a confused quagmire of plot threads. Rodriguez and Miller deserve much credit for keeping everything clear and easily understandable, even despite a lot of motor-mouthed, jargony character narration (somewhat like a psychotic, anti-social film noir on speed) and the circuitous timeline.
The cast is excellent. Willis is every ounce the action hero he ever was. Owen should be an action hero (why had I never noticed him before?). Rourke is transformed into a hulking, unstoppable behemoth whom you love even though he's killing more people, in more brutal ways than Jason does in four or five Friday the 13th films--and all just because a hooker slept with him for one night. Del Toro is deliciously evil. Elijah Wood, as Kevin, is extremely creepy. Jessica Alba, as Nancy Callahan, is incredibly complex, not to mention beautiful. Devon Aoki is exquisite, elegant and equally beautiful, even as she's chopping off heads. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
As great as the cast is, they cannot trump the biggest star, the overall style of the film, which surprised me just as much for its mordant humor as its intense action-oriented brutality. It may take a couple scenes to become acclimated to the unusual approach, but it is well worth it. Sin City is a film that can likely be watched over and over again, acquiring new appreciation on each viewing. If you're at all a fan of any of the cast or crew, or if you enjoy film noir and don't mind violence, you can't afford to pass by this film. I have a feeling that its unusual tone and structure will likely be very influential in the future.