Sin City
Written by Robert Rodriquez and Frank Miller
Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller
Dimension Films
2005
Rating:


With pulp pulsing through its veins, "Sin City" takes the viewer on one of the most violently stylized movies ever projected onto a screen. But it also has a bloody, pumping heart. After all, if it weren't for love, the acts of gunplay, castration and dismemberment on display here wouldn't have to be committed. Hartigan (Bruce Willis), Dwight (Clive Owen) and Marv (Mickey Rourke) each embark on kamikaze quests of revenge and redemption, all in the name of women. These men — and many others — will engage in many brutal deeds, but Sin City is a place where imperious masculinity is often ruthlessly punished.

In the shallowest yet most levity-filled segment of the triptych narrative, Dwight attempts to protect a group of prostitutes (lead by Rosario Dawson's Gail), except that the part of town run by the hookers is the neighborhood that's actually the safest. As bad cop Jackie Boy (Benicio del Toro) soon learns, they are Valkyries not to be crossed.

Rourke gives a bone-deep performance as Marv, the ugly brute out to avenge the angelic Goldie (Jaime King), a woman who loved him for a night before being quietly murdered beside him. With day-glo bandages adorning his face, Marv mercilessly hunts down and kills the men responsible for Goldie's killing. Marv soon uncovers an elaborate plot of misogyny and cannibalism, and it's left up to him to tear down the patriarchy.

Patriarchy demolishing and angels also appear in the final, stand-out storyline. As one of the lone good cops in Sin City, Hartigan makes the mistake of trying to arrest Roark Jr. (Nick Stahl), the child-raping son of a powerful senator (Powers Boothe). Sentenced to jail under the false charge of raping 12-year-old Nancy, the girl he saved, Hartigan is forced to confess to the crime seven years into his prison time so that he can save the grown-up Nancy (Jessica Alba) from a Yellow Bastard out to tie up loose ends. It's here that the depravity begins to take on the form of something approaching transcendence. Through their trials by fire, the anti-heroes of Sin City are allowed to enter heaven.

Slavish adherence to the original text generally has suffocated results (witness the first two "Harry Potter" films before director Alfonso Cuarσn breathed new life into the series), but here director Robert Rodriguez ("Once Upon a Time in Mexico") — working closely with "Sin City" creator and comic book god Frank Miller with "guest direction" by Quentin Tarantino — has achieved a cinematic feat nothing short of revolutionary. Practically using Miller's original comic book panels as a blueprint for his cinematography, Rodriguez creates an organic leap from page to screen that not only remains in the spirit of the "Sin City" books, but adheres to the hardboiled tradition of great film noirs.

"Sin City" is also one of the first movies to bring the full potential of digital filmmaking to fruition. Shot on digital video in front of a green screen, "Sin City" looks as rich and as real as if it had been filmed in a seedy New York City back alley.

Dark, violent, but ultimately built on a foundation of strident morality, "Sin City" is a fully realized world of "booze, broads and bullets," as Miller would say. It's a city where blood always spills directly from the heart.

Posted Saturday, April 16, 2005

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