Ultra-violent, stomach-churning and beautiful-just as it was meant to be.
We've been burned before. Comic book fans impatiently waiting for their favorite characters to make
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it to the big screen have seen some highs and far too many lows in recent years. We've seen
our trust betrayed by films like
Elektra
and
The Punisher
. Now, with the arrival of
Sin City
, fanboys finally have something to smile about.
The film combines stories from three of Frank Miller's award-winning graphic novels;
That Yellow Bastard
follows detective John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) who goes to jail for a crime he didn't commit to protect a young girl named Nancy (Jessica Alba) from a sexual predator (Nick Stahl);
The Hard Goodbye
is the story of Marv (Mickey Rourke), a monstrous tough guy on the trail of his lover's (Jaime King) killer;
The Big Fat Kill
follows Dwight (Clive Owen) as he tries to protect a group of prostitutes (led by Rosario Dawson) from the fallout of a crooked cop's (Benicio Del Toro) death.
Each of these stories is connected
Pulp Fiction
-like through shared characters and hang-outs, but the narrative lines never fully cross, creating the episodic feel of a 1940s serial. Hartigan's story bookends the film, with Marv and Dwight's fast-paced, ultra-violent tales moving the film through the bulk of its two hours.
Though the film's emotional stock seems to be primarily invested in the May-December romance between Hartigan and Nancy, its real heart beats inside Marv. Buried beneath a mountain of make-up, Rourke's performance steals the show through a mix of humor and grit that make him as lovable as he is scary.
Like last fall's
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
,
Sin City
was shot primarily on green screen, with the city's dark alleys and waterfronts added in digital post-production. The
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effects in the former film choked the life from the story and its characters, resulting in a stifled viewing experience that overloaded the senses with visual information. In
Sin City
, however, the filmmakers have kept the digital sets mostly bare, filling them with larger-than-life characters, speeding cars and plenty of gunfire.
Sin City
is an obsessive adaptation that seems to blur the line between comic book and film. Even Peter Jackson's fan-friendly
Lord of the Rings
trilogy took considerable artistic license with its source material, putting one character's dialogue into the mouth of another and eliminating entire scenes from the novels. Not so with
Sin City
. By having Frank Miller, the comic's outspoken creator, directly involved as Robert Rodriguez's co-director, the film does what few adaptations do-it respects both its source material and its fans. There are no Hollywood compromises, character switcheroos or tacked-on love stories. The over-the-top violence and the stark layout of Miller's pages, including splashes of color in clothes, eyes and blood and scenes of narration over a black screen, remain intact. Specific shots, costumes and dialogue have been lifted directly off the page and projected onscreen creating what is, without a doubt, the most faithful comic book adaptation of all time. Maybe even the best.
