Cinema Tuesdays Review

a film by Robert Rodriguez
By Randy Anderson

“Sin City” isn’t a nice place to visit, and you certainly wouldn’t want to live there, but it sure is diverting. Texan Robert Rodriguez’s film after the graphic novels by Frank Miller has recently come out on DVD. The film industry sure has an ongoing love affair with the comic book, and this latest film, “Sin City,” is closer to the synergy of bold story-telling and the imagination of an avid reader than any other comic-based film I’ve seen.

Confession. I wasn’t a comics kid. I didn’t find the super heroes of my youth the least bit believable. It wasn’t until magazines like Creepy and Eerie arrived in the late sixties that I found what appealed to me: gripping situations and world-class artists. Of course these productions were entirely in glorious black and white. This marriage of dramatic art and story telling has blossomed over the last thirty years, and now aficionados differentiate the good from the bad by calling the best Graphic Novels. Frank Miller’s Sin City is a dark and dangerous place where life is reduced to its barest essentials. There are lots of ways to tell a story and artist Miller has decided on the rigid conventions of film noir (black film, as in lack of light and the dark content of the story) as the quickest and most extreme. One of the biggest differences between movies from, say, the seventies and the films of today is compression. It used to be that mood and realism were important. Now mood is a quick glimpse of a decaying house on a hill and a few jump shots later the monster grabs the hero. Likewise overall realism gets in the way of the vicarious pleasure of the escapism we demand. Reality is toothaches, property taxes, and shoes that don’t fit; this is why films today have their colors digitally manipulated to further remove us from the commonplace.

Robert Rodriguez states in a short film about the making of this movie that this is Frank Miller’s “Sin City” and not his own. To back this up Miller is given a director credit, with top billing. Quentin Tarantino, a long time friend of Rodriguez, is listed a guest director.

“Sin City” is a collection of short films that share characters and locale. As a friend reminded me, Noir is rare in story telling because the highest and lowest of society often find themselves grappling for the same dream. What makes this film so gripping is the imaginative way that Rodriguez has filmed these stories. We are miles from an ordinary set. Much of the film is shot in front of green screen and the dark and brooding backgrounds are added by computer. The slight unreality of computer generation enhances the weirdness of Miller’s vision. Of course the film is in high contrast black and white, with telling splashes of color that arrest our eyes.

There are familiar characters in the story, including the rare good cop, dependably played by Bruce Willis, and Benicio Del Toro’s whispering menace makes him a standout in the galaxy of hoods and toughs that populate this urban jungle. The award for the creepiest character goes to Elijah Wood who combines glasses, a Charlie Brown shirt, and the ugliest crimes in the movie. Then there is Marv, a big galoot who is an odd mix of gargoyle and Everyman. His face is an impossible mix of chin and granite, which is good because Marv takes more beatings than whipping cream. Marv, who finds himself in the deep end of trouble, has to solve a crime and punish those responsible his way, which is to say the violent way. He also has some of the best lines in the movie, with asides like, “I love hitmen; no matter what you do to them - you don’t feel bad” and “his keys say the Padre drove a Mercedes or at least that’s what they are passing off as a Mercedes these days. Modern cars: they all look like electric shavers.”

Mickey Rourke is amazing and totally believable as Marv, and he steals every scene he is in. Frank Miller’s vision of women is similar to one of the prophets of modern graphic art, Frank Frazetta. They are beautifully rounded and pouty, to this Miller adds extremely dangerous. Jessica Alba, Jaime King, and Rosario Dawson play these determined women who survive the hardships of a place were the desires of men are so close to the surface.

“Sin City” isn’t a DVD you would pull out to show your prospective in-laws. It isn’t for children or maybe anyone contemplating same. It is really dark, sexy, violent, and visually arresting. Some of the scenes made me laugh out loud they were so beautifully done. Sin City is a dirty pleasure that is a joy to watch. Bravo to all involved.

“Sin City” is rated R for nudity and extreme violence. In includes a bonus featurette detailing the making of “Sin City.”

8/25/05

Back to the main Cinema Tuesdays Reviews page

More about the Cinema Tuesdays series