I was never much of a comic book reader as a kid. But after years of watching friends read violent and dark comics, I decided to give them a chance, starting with Sin City (1991) by Frank Miller, and I fell in love. When I heard that my favorite graphic novel was being turned into a big-budget film I was both excited and nervous. I’d seen how Hollywood studios had recently botched Daredevil and Spiderman. I needn’t have feared.
Sin City is the best and most loyal film adaptation of a graphic novel series that I have ever seen. This is surely due in part to Miller’s own involvement with the film, but the project is also a perfect fit for gore-fetishizing co-director Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Spy Kids). The two have combined to translate three of Miller’s novels into film. While incomplete in the scope of the entire Sin City series, the stories they include are captured with almost frame-by-frame perfection. This staunch loyalty to the comic can be attributed to Miller, to be sure, but the very fact that Rodriguez insisted that Miller be billed as co-director, at the cost of having to quit the Directors Guild of America, shows how serious he was about making this film properly.
It’s difficult to tell who did what in terms of production. Shot in quintessential film noir style, the polished perfection hints at Rodriguez’s experience and influence. The graphic scenes, especially the action sequences and baroque, computer-generated backgrounds, are most likely Miller’s contributions. Nearly all of the dialogue was taken directly from the comic, which is filled with dark and stylized writing.
“I don’t know why and I don’t know how,” Marv, played brilliantly by Mickey Rourke (Man on Fire), proclaims, “but when I find out who did it, it won’t be quick or quiet like it was with you. No, it’ll be loud and nasty. My kind of kill.” The movie is riddled with these sort of vicious, tough-guy declarations.
Guest director Quentin Tarantino’s touch is not to be forgotten either. It’s easy to see his influence on a particularly surreal driving scene involving Clive Owen (I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead) and a dead Benicio del Toro (Traffic). Needless to say, the dialogue is excellent. Shades of Pulp Fiction’s own bloody car sequence can be seen, and indeed the pulp culture of the ‘50s pervades the movie. There’s even one Kill Bill-style scene, where the gorgeous Devon Aoki flies and leaps while spearing her victims with a samurai sword.
As for that spearing, while I noticed the gratuitous gore of the movie, I wasn’t shocked. It’s possible that I’m too desensitized to wince in pain when assassin Kevin (Elijah Wood) is eaten alive by his dog. Perhaps it’s my cold-heartedness that allows me to laugh when child molester Yellow Bastard (Nick Stahl) gets castrated not once, but twice. Having read the comic beforehand, though, and knowing that gore, masculinity, violence and nihilism are part and parcel of the story, I wasn’t appalled.
The violence is also easily digestible because of the amazingly stylish presentation. The entire movie is shot in rich dark tones with the occasional splash of color. Portrayed in black and white, and dramatically toned down when displayed graphically, the violence was at times even funny.
The absurdity of the characters and the plotlines are what allow us to dive into the stories and connect with even the most heinous of personalities. There are pedophiles, cannibals, assassins, hookers and con men. The men are cruel, angry, unrepentant and brutally violent. The women are sinfully gorgeous and scantily clad. Perfectly cast across the board, with the possible exception of the annoying Britney Murphy, the list of stars is stacked. Owen is perfect in his role as an ex-con and Rourke is eerily convincing as the deformed Marv, who kills until his own death in order to avenge his murdered love, the hooker Goldie (Jaime King). Rosario Dawson (25th Hour) is sexy and deadly as the hooker-queen Gail, and Bruce Willis (Die Hard) gives his best performance in years as the hard-boiled Hartigan.
Even amidst the horror and gore, the characters are not unsympathetic. They can be darkly humorous and often do things out of a reasonably well-guided sense of masculine duty and revenge. Before you start to feel bad for the men, though, they are usually shot, castrated, beheaded or some combination of those options.
Ultimately, life is cheap in Sin City, and it’s important to remember that. If you take the film too seriously, any moral qualms you may have will probably elicit some gut reaction. It’s better to just sit back and take in the gorgeous cinematography, great directing, fantastic acting, lurid violence, and sleaze that make Sin City easily the best film so far this year.
