I can see why they're called "graphic" novels..... (possible spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (2 April 2005)

With so many movies nowadays being based on comic books---excuse me, "graphic novels" now---I almost feel like an interloper in the audience. So I try to ignore the movie's origins and just take it on it's own merits. I went to see "Hellboy" because I like Guillermo Del Toro's stuff (and was not unhappy with it) and I went to see "Sin City" because I like Robert Rodriguez' stuff. I once read a few pages of a "Sin City" story (it had a woman handcuffed to a bed, fans presumably will know which one it was) and found it visually very striking (this was in a bookstore and I would have felt guilty reading more without buying it). Clearly Rodriguez wanted that exact look for his film, everything stylized. Warren Beatty tried that once with "Dick Tracy," with mixed results. I would call these results also (decidedly) mixed.
Like "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," also shot in front of screens, the visual aura alone is enough to keep one's attention riveted, whether or not the action being viewed makes a lot of sense. Inevitably (and probably intentionally) the characters are somewhat two-dimensional, especially when the make-up makes them look like cartoons, the most extreme example in "Sin City" being of course the "Yellow Bastard" who reminded me of a character in one of the "Star Trek" spin-offs on TV. This keeps the viewer at a certain distance from the proceedings, making it harder to become emotionally involved with the characters but easier to cope with the violence that occurs, and trust me, there's a lot of it here, and it's really nasty. But unlike some comic-based flicks set in real places with "ordinary" people involved, the "Basin City" in this movie has no specified region or time period and no one seems to live there except cops, crooks and prostitutes. In a way it reminded me of "Last Man Standing" (also with Bruce Willis) where the "town" had no population except two rival gangs and a passive sheriff. All these people seem to exist for no reason except to kill and/or be killed, as nastily as possible. There's a corrupt Senator lording it over everyone rather like a medieval feudal lord. But in the Middle Ages the peasants really had no options. In Sin City the characters have automobiles (1950's vintage, including a gorgeous Chevy Bel Air) but it never seems to occur to anyone to get into one of these and drive it to another town where maybe life is slightly less horrible.
In "Kill Bill," directed by Rodriguez' "brother" Quentin Tarantino, there was also a lot of stylized violence but with an emotional resonance because one could get caught up in what was happening with Uma Thurman as our "alter ego." "Sin City" has several chronologically overlapping stories a la Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" but without the latter's mordant charm or quirky humor. It's a more or less non-stop exploration of ever more inventive ways to kill and/or torture and/or abuse people. After a while I was thinking "Shouldn't someone just nuke this effing place and put all these people out of their misery?" It would've made more sense if it had turned out to be set on some foreign planet, like "Dark City" or John Norman's "Gor" novels. Here's what I think the problem boils down to: in a movie with even the most fantastical of premises, there has to be a kind of "inroad" of perception for the audience (at least for some of us). As Monty Python's John Cleese once put it, "Once you choose your 'crazy' premise, you must stick to it absolutely rigidly." There has to be some kind of hook upon which we can hang our figurative viewing hats. For some, of course, the "violence buzz" is plenty. "Hey, there's a guy with his arms and legs chopped off, and he's getting eaten by a wolf!!! Can they top that?...." "Hey, there's a mutant freak whipping a woman whom he'd also raped when she was a child, and now he's getting pounded into an amorphous mass!!! Can they top that?..." etc.
(Just for the record, when the young girl was sitting tied to a chair getting menaced by the creep, that pretty much soured the rest of it for me. Stuff like that happens in real life and if I have to see it in the movies, I want to see it in a real-life context. Maybe I'm just showing my age.) The actors all seemed to be giving Rodriguez (and credited co-director Frank Miller) what he wanted. Powers Booth as the evil Senator made the best impression on me; with this and his equally visceral work as whorehouse boss Cy Tolliver on HBO's "Deadwood," he seems to have come full circle to when he blew me away as the Rev. Jim Jones many moons ago. Mickey Rourke, always underrated as an actor I thought, was amazingly effective under his facial prosthetics. The chicks were all pretty cute---I put it that way deliberately, since that seemed to be why they were there.
One final bit of grumpiness: what was the point of inserting a set of IRA types as villains? By reminding us of the existence of these real killers of real people (including the recent knifing of a Catholic guy in a bar) the movie just highlighted the rest of it's own "alien-ness." Why not throw in Al Qaeda while they were at it? Gotta admit, though, "Sin City" looks darn good. Can't recall when I've seen such sadistic nihilism presented with so much flair and panache. Heck, Mr. Rodriguez could give Japan's Mr. Miike a run for his money. It's all just a comic book anyway, so enjoy!