Rodriguez, Miller, and Co. Triumph with "Sin City"

Rating: 10/10 (23 March 2005)

Before I begin my review, let me just say that I've recently become familiar with Sin City. After seeing the trailers and Comic-Con footage, I decided to buy the first five books to see what I was missing and what to expect.
Anyhow, I recently attended an advanced screening of Robert Rodriguez/Frank Miller's Sin City in Houston and hot damn, what a movie! The movie is based off three of graphic novelist/co-director Frank Miller's books and a short story from Booze, Broads, & Bullets: The Customer is Always Right  An assassin (Josh Hartnett) and his target (Marley Shelton) have a discussion on a rainy balcony that ends in bloodshed; The Hard Goodbye - Marv (Mickey Rourke), a hulking brute, is out to find the person who murdered Goldie (Jaime King), a kindly prostitute he met and fell in love with one night; The Big Fat Kill  Dwight (Clive Owen), an ex-photographer with a new face, is out to protect his two loves, barmaid Shellie (Brittany Murphy) and Old Town leader Gail (Rosario Dawson), from Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro), a rough hero cop who really doesn't know when to take no for an answer. And when his temper leads to his bloody murder, it's up to Dwight and the Old Town girls to get rid of the body before the cops and the mob find out about it and wage war on Old Town; and That Yellow Bastard  Hartigan (Bruce Willis) is the only clean cop in Sin City and out to get Roark Jr. (Nick Stahl), the pedophile son of the corrupt Senator Roark (Powers Boothe), who has kidnapped a young girl, Nancy (Mackenzie Vega as a child; Jessica Alba as an adult), and plans to rape and kill her. Hartigan rescues Nancy and puts Junior in a coma, but suffers the wrath of Senator Roark and gets blamed for Junior's crimes. Eight years later, Hartigan gets out and has to protect Nancy, now an exotic dancer, from the Yellow Bastard, a deformed yellow "man" that shares a disturbing tie with Roark Jr.
Before I discuss the film itself, let me discuss the cast.
Mickey Rourke is BACK with a vengeance. He owns the Marv role, just like Ron Perlman owned Hellboy last year. After years of bad cameos and roles, Bruce Willis finally gets it right with Hartigan. Clive Owen is great as Dwight (hell, he even gets the best monologues out of the three lead characters). Nick Stahl well, if you've seen Bully, you'll know what to expect, except that he's now a deformed pedophile instead of a violent surfer kid. Once you see Elijah Wood as Kevin, you will never look at him the same way again. That's all I can say without spoiling anything big. Benicio Del Toro is freaky as Jackie Boy and you honestly can't wait to see him get what's coming to him. Michael Madsen has an interesting extended cameo as Hartigan's semi-corrupt partner (the character also appears in A Dame to Kill For). There's also Michael Clarke Duncan, Josh Hartnett, Powers Boothe, and Rutger Hauer, but there's not really much to say about them except that they're effective in their brief roles. Jessica Alba proves once more that she's more than just a pretty face as Nancy. She could've easily played Nancy as some dumb bimbo who's in love with Hartigan (even though that would've been disrespectful to Miller's vision), but she brings vulnerability and sass to the role and it works. Chiaki Kuriyama, step down. The crown for Menacing Asian Warrior goes to Devon Aoki's deadly little Miho (and boy, is she deadly). The best thing about Miho, excluding her fighting abilities, is the mystery surrounding her. Like Uma Thurman and David Carradine in the first half of Kill Bill, you know nothing about Miho, except that she's silent and the deadliest woman in all of Sin City. For those worried about Brittany Murphy, don't worry (much). She makes cameo appearances in THG and TYB and plays a semi-pivotal role in TBFK (hey, at least it's not her repeating Little Black Book). After her embarrassing appearance in Alexander, Rosario Dawson makes up for it threefold as Gail. She's decked out in bondage gear and loving every minute of it. Jaime King is good as Goldie and her twin sister, Wendy. Alexis Bledel sheds her good girl image as Becky, the Old Town girl who brings chaos wherever she goes. And Carla Gugino has an interesting small role as Marv's lesbian parole officer who supplies him with his pills.
Now, onto the film Rodriguez KNOWS what he's doing. By bringing Miller on to supervise and Quentin Tarantino to direct one scene, he helps bring Sin City to life. The movie has an amazing 1940's film noir look to it, even with the sequences that had splashes of color, thanks to Rodriguez's cinematography and editing, which closely follows the images in the books. The art direction, completely CGI with minimal sets, is so realistic, you'd think they spent a fortune on it. The score, an action/jazz mix, is perfectly done by Rodriguez, John Debney, and Graeme Revell. While Sin City will likely be forgotten come Oscar time, mainly because of the insanely violent nature of it, I am hopeful that the film garners a Makeup nomination because the work done to create Marv and the Yellow Bastard is just phenomenal.
As I mentioned earlier, I bought the first five books and eagerly await the re-releases of Booze, Broads, and Bullets and Hell and Back just to see what Rodriguez and Miller are cooking up for Sin 2. If Rodriguez was right about wanting Maria Bello as Ava Lord in ADtKF and Johnny Depp for Wallace in H&B, then it could be even better than the first.
To keep it short and sweet: Sin City is THE movie of 2005. It's visually astonishing and has a great ensemble and director(s) to back it.
A+