Frank Miller's Sin City (
) | ||||
Directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez (special guest director Quentin Tarantino) | ||||
Written by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez | ||||
|
Miller's original Sin City, winner of the Eisner Award, features outrageous (and outrageously
violent) storylines and striking (though often sloppy) artwork, infused with the heavy chiaroscuro of the early E.C.
horror comics. Visual emphasis comes from the composition and occasional uses of color to paint important
figures. As a pairing of style and content, these graphics are exemplary. Miller's characters will step out of black
spreads of negative space, such spaces gleaming like oily puddles under sodium arc lights, while an ivory downpour
lacerates the page with a wrath. These people live in the morally bankrupt Basin City, in Miller's hands a literally
black-and-white world, though occasionally you can find a yellow bastard or a woman in red.
Rodriguez has built a near-perfect imitation of Miller's gloom and doom, forging it in front of green screens and digital
cameras which let him add backgrounds and those spots of color afterwards (are Alexis Bledel's eyes really that
blue?). The film's visual impact is astonishing: it looks like a milkshake blended with pitch. Clearly the graphic
novel was used in place of storyboards for the film; there is often no appreciable difference between panels of the books
and frames of the movie. It's only fitting that Miller was handed a co-director credit, even at the cost of
Rodriguez resigning from the Director's Guild. The only thing missing is an animation of turning pages, as cars jump into the air while
cresting a hill at high speed, or a breeze blows a jacket back from its wearer just right for a dramatic effect. Perhaps
the most beautiful moment is a snowfall in the final act, as a character is released from years in prison back into a world
as ugly as he has ever seen it. It manages to be both poignant and gorgeous at the same time.
Rodriguez's script takes three of Sin City's more popular storylines and mashes them together somewhat in
the manner of Pulp Fiction (Tarantino gets a small "guest director" credit, as well, for a nasty car ride about
half-way through), and the feeling of several narratives bottled under high pressure doesn't let up. "The Hard Goodbye" features
Marv (Mickey Rourke, in a role I imagine he was born to play, he's so good in it), one of the representative figures of the
series, a grotesque, hyper-masculine superman with a high tolerance for pain and a soft spot for dames. When a prostitute
that he loved is murdered, Marv goes on a rampage to avenge her death. His quest eventually takes him to the highest reaches
of the city's power, both secular and spiritual (look for Rutger Hauer in a scary and campy cameo). "The Big Fat Kill"
revolves around do-gooder Dwight McCarthy (Clive Owen), an underdog with a shady past, a weakness for women, and an apparent
tendency to suffer psychotic delusions while under stress ("Hi. I'm Shellie's new boyfriend and I'm out of my mind..."). His
romantic rivalry with a dirty cop leads to a nascent street war between Basin City's organized prostitutes and its corrupt
police force. While it seems odd to say it, this is the film's version of a comedy of manners, if there is such a thing for
the etiquette due a severed head. The final and possibly best tale is "That Yellow Bastard," starring Bruce Willis as John
Hartigan, an honest cop forced into early retirement because of a bad ticker (his heart isn't in it anymore), but who takes
one last mission: stopping a vicious pedophile who also happens to be the son of Basin City's tyrannical mayor. Hartigan
manages to save 11-year-old Nancy Callahan, but at the cost of his freedom. Nancy grows up to become a popular, lasso-twirling
stripper (the luscious Jessica Alba), and when she's threatened once more, Hartigan is forced into another nasty showdown as
history seeks to repeat itself. In contrast to the blood work of the other tales, this portion of the film is evocative and
melancholy, and plays with time in a way that feels almost elastic. (There's also a framing tale lifted from "The
Customer is Always Right," featuring Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton in spot perfect casting.)
Occasionally the film is too perfect an adaptation of the books. On the page, the captions and the pictures can exist side
by side, one complementing the other without competition, because text and pictures are frozen moments, and you can take your
time passing back and forth between word and image. On the screen, as action is constrained to match the pace of a voice-over
monologue, you're reminded of why everyone quickly bored of Harrison Ford's narration in Blade Runner: it's a static conceit,
a knife in the back of dramatic art. And in Sin City, there are lots of voice-over monologues. Authentic to the genre or
not, there's little use for it in film.
The supporting cast is strong across the board, though some are better than others, bright as diamonds in tar: the aforementioned
Bledel is a subtle femme fatale, dangerously innocent as the prostitute Becky; Elijah Wood is super creepy as the child-like
killer Kevin, with no dialogue but tons of menace; Benicio Del Toro as Jackie Boy is comically and sickeningly unlucky; and
the captivating Carla Gugino is extremely poised while being almost entirely naked (she has a body that should be on
display in the Smithsonian.) And so on right down the line. To their credit, all of the actors sell the movie with a
straight face; if they had seemed to be mocking it, it all would have fallen apart. That's how close to parody this film's
exuberance carries it.
The stories are all about pain leading to anger, anger leading to suffering, and suffering leading to someone getting what
they had coming to them (Yoda would hate this thing). Actually, Miller and Rodriguez include precious little evidence about
real suffering; they display plenty of variations on pain and violence without a hint of its human toll. This is
why "The Yellow Bastard" works so well, I suppose, as it's the only story here that has an idea of what innocence means and
what it may cost to protect it. I was honestly heartbroken by the finale, partly because Bruce Willis is excellent as
Hartigan, and Alba seems like sweetness and light yearning to feel whole. In its final minutes, Sin City finds it has a
heart, after all.
I can't imagine anyone who's read the comics -- sorry, "graphic novels" -- being disappointed with this, as it's such a
loving rendition of what they will be paying their money for. But fidelity to the source material can be a mixed
blessing. Bound and determined to reproduce Miller's books exactly as they are, Rodriguez held on to every caricature,
every overkill moment, every dismemberment and beheading. At the showing I attended, you could see people start to
walk out about thirty minutes into it. Some things aren't for everyone. It really is Frank Miller's Sin City,
for better and worse.
David Newbert worked for public and university libraries for several years before joining the college book trade. He lives in New Mexico, where the aliens landed. |
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