Movie Review: SIN CITY (2005)

[Nived]

Any body who claims to know anything about comics will tell you that among the best in the business is Frank Miller, whose work includes not one, but two landmark Batman graphic novels; The Dark Knight Returns and Year One (one of my personal favorites), but also wrote and illustrated the entire Sin City series. SinCity is a dark and filthy world controlled by corruption and driven by greed and outlandish violence. Director Robert Rodriguez decided to take it upon himself to track down Miller and convince him that he could bring his comic creation to the big screen using advanced green screen techniques and computer effects. Miller was so impressed Rodriguez asked if him if he’d be interested in co-directing the film. And thus we have a brilliant comic book creator and an enthusiastic, if sub par director of action flicks teaming up together to bring to us Frank Miller’s Sin City, a dark, wild, violent and sexy trip into the only town to give Gotham City a good run for its money.

SinCity consists of three separate storylines, from three different graphic novels (The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill and That Yellow Bastard), each story follows three different “heroes”. In the first of the three stories we have Marv (played well by Mickey Rourke), an ugly bruiser who’s fallen in love with a hooker named Goldie (played by Jamie King). But when Marv is set up for Goldie’s murder every cop in Basin City is out to kill him. It’s up to him to uncover the road of corruption that runs deep in the veins of Sin City, and exact his revenge for the death of Goldie. Along the way Marv meets Wendy; Goldie’s identical twin (also King), a creepy cannibal named Kevin (played effectively by Elijah Wood), a corrupt bishop (played by Rutger Hauer), a memorably sexy parole officer named Lucille (played by Carla Gugino) and Frank Miller in a small cameo as a Catholic priest.

The second story in SinCity is The Big Fat Kill, which is easily the weakest and least interesting section of the film. It follows a character named Dwight (played by Clive Owen) and Gail (played seductively by Rosairo Dawson, in an incredibly kinky outfit) and the girl’s of “Old Town”. The plot is about the lengths in which Dwight and Gail must go to protect their turf when a local drunk cop named Jackie Boy (played well by Benico Del Toro) gets himself killed in the back alley of “Old Town”. What happens next is a seemingly never-ending bloodbath of bullets, explosions and severed body parts.

The third and final story in Sin City comes from the graphic novel That Yellow Bastard, which is about a cop with a bad “ticker” named Hartigan (played well by a roughed up Bruce Willis), who’s on the verge of retirement and is trying to put away a twisted serial rapist called “Junior” (played sinisterly by Nick Sthal) who has just kidnapped a little girl named Nancy. The story is about Hartigan’s never-ending loyalty to protect and save Nancy, not only as a little girl, but also much later when she’s a gown up little stripper working at a seedy bar. It seems that “Junior” isn’t going away anytime soon, and will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

SinCity is a visually brilliant and exciting film; shot in black and white with splashes of color. The film is just a little over two hours long and moves quickly, packing enough story and plot for a three hour movie. The violence is non-stop, over-the-top and gory, and some moments evoke laughter, while others will make you shudder at its gruesomeness. The film is full of memorable characters and action sequences, but only a few of these “heroes” are really likeable, these are more like anit-heroes, and while Sin City may very well be the closest comic book adaptation to come out of Hollywood that doesn’t necessarily make it the best. I still prefer Batman Begins or even Spider-Man 2 over this film for that spot, because of those film's heart and ability to become emotionally involved with the characters, but SinCity certainly is like nothing you’ve ever seen before, and that’s what really makes it a must-see movie.


8 / 10