Rightful heir to Dobermann

Rating: 8/10 (31 May 2005)

It was a grey day when I snapped open the lid on my laptop. After chugging back the day's first cup of joe I violently ripped open my pack of cigarettes and popped one in my hard, cruel mouth. The broad upstairs could wait, I had to review Sin City, and fast While surefire hit Sin City is full of hard men and 'easy on the eye' women, it is an ultra-violent world beyond Raymond Chandler-Humphrey Bogart's Fifties era of gumshoes and handguns.
It's mainly black and white spiced up by the occasional inspired flash of colour with the result that every frame of film is an instant slice of breathtaking art.
Sin City, based on the acclaimed comic by Frank Miller, is easily one of the best-looking films of the year but it packs several unexpected punches that will leave you staggering out of the cinema wanting more.
Unlike other comic book adaptations, the film isn't centred on just one character, giving us their background, life and loves, their mum's maiden name, etcera.
For once it makes more sense to have little or no clue as to what is going on. It's enough simply to have these fantastic, ridiculous creations on screen courtesy of Miller and co-director Rodriguez who 'shot and cut' and also scored the film's music.
Set in Basin City, part of Sin City 700 feet below ground level, the film starts off with Hartigan (Willis) on his last day on the job as a cop - ready to go out in a blaze of glory.
With his partner Bob (Madsen) Hartigan tracks down the whereabouts of a little girl, Nancy Callahan (Alba), who has been abducted.
A lone good man in a bad town, Hartigan battles against forced more twisted and powerful than him, coming up against a powerful senator (Boothe, best known for Walter Hill's Southern Comfort) and his son (Stahl).
Meanwhile Marv (Rourke) is wondering who could have killed beautiful blonde Goldie (Jaime King) who lies next to him in bed.
Marv, an indestructible killing machine, has an iron- shaped flat top hairdo and a Kirk Douglas-modelled nose and chin taken to an extreme.
This already odd-looking hoodlum with a hefty heart rounds off his look by appropiating other men's leather coats and having little white plasters all over the cuts on his body from jumping from cars or windows.
The lovable maniac is as determined as Hartigan to uncover the reason for Goldie's death and he starts to make people talk  he calls it "killing my way to the truth" - until a trail leads to Cardinal Roark (Hauer) and creepy killer Kevin (Wood).
All good things come in threes and Clive Owen's Dwight shows up, cut from the same saintly-cum-sinister cloth as Hartigan and Marv.
While Dwight isn't as riveting as his fellow vigilantes he does introduce us to the ladies of Old Town, the prostitutes who patrol their patch.
His old girlfriend Gail (Dawson) joins forces with Dwight when Jackie-Boy (Del Toro) disturbs the peace in Old Town and a whole lot more blood is shed in the name of glorious entertainment.
All this and Irish terrorists, ridiculous quiffs, fantastic lines, a bald Nazi, gold balls for eyes and the scariest silent martial artist cannibal you will have seen.
Sin City is released in a digital print which makes all the dirt and sleaze stand out magnificently and even lets film fans focus on the oddly quivering lips of Josh Hartnett at one point.
Along with Hartnett at the bottom of the talent barrel, Brittany Murphy and Madsen are as crummy as ever but Rourke and Del Toro cancel them out the second they're on screen and the casting as a whole is just right.
A sequel has been announced but, for now, feast your eyes on the rightful heir to A Clockwork Orange, Dobermann and Pulp Fiction. A monstrously good time.