Review: Sin City

Sin City
Starring Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Jessica Alba, Benicio Del Toro, et al.
Written and created by Frank Miller
Directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez

3 stars (out of 4)

Sin City is the place where you can get away with it all, and not just murder, although there’s plenty of that to go around. No, here you’ll find melodramatic dialogue, impossible laws of physics, and sordid tales brought to life in such striking black and white that when the little pieces of color occasionally seep in, your mind cries out in revolt: tales like this one couldn’t take place in our world, a world of color and order. A tale like this one could only happen in the comic books.

This is a movie, after all, drawn from a series of graphic novels, something most people don’t care about or read. The pulpy plots, ham-fisted dialogue and bullet-riddled hearts worn on grungy sleeves are the domain of the nameless outcasts, the boys huddled alone at the cafeteria table reading tales of pain when the real world seems much worse.

Robert Rodriguez’s latest film weaves together four of Frank Miller’s legendary extreme-noir comic books, with much of the dialogue, voice-over and actual framing of the shots drawn straight from the graphic novels. True to two-dimensional form, characters voice thoughts like, “When it comes to calming a traumatized 19-year-old, I’m as expert as a palsy victim performing brain surgery with a lead pipe.” And the romance is equally juvenile, grown men knowing no greater tribute to their women than professions like, “She smelled like angels ought to smell,” something only one of Miller's young readers deep in the throes of calf-love would dare voice.

An old cop, Hartigan (Willis), does his best to save a young girl and stop a murderous pedophiliac. A pug-ugly brute named Marv (Mickey Rourke) sets out to avenge the curious death of his true love and one-night stand. And Dwight (Owen) is drawn into an escalating gang war between the whores, cops and mobsters of Sin City. But these things are just placeholders, killers to root for and killers to hate while we sit still and hang on and wonder what's next. The film is a pure thrill ride, to be sure, but where we're actually headed doesn't seem to matter. Gaping holes in plotlines are left wide open, and this carryover from Miller's books, although loyal to the source, makes for a pretty uneven film. By the end, it seems that just as many heroes, if they could be called that, have died as villains, and their sacrifices seem in vain.

Rodriguez’s clear love for the source material bleeds through every frame, overeager glance and all of the many severed limbs. Not to worry, though: the violence here is purely stylized and 100% fictional, more Tarantinian folly than Gibson guilt-trip. Tarantino is even credited as a guest director, although the meaning of this is never made clear. Similarly, Rodriguez and Miller are listed as co-directors, a move that prompted Rodriguez to quit the DGA when the organization objected to the dual credit.

The film is a glistening, blistering bloodbath, a love song from the director to the author, and enjoyable for most of its 2 hours and 6 minutes. The longest and most satisfying vignette, that of Marv and his vendetta, carries the bulk of the film, although its length causes some drag toward its wandering end, especially when, as happens often in Sin City, a few minor battles are won while the larger was remains unfinished or unfought. Still, it’s hard to fault a filmmaker with the skill to create such a visually stunning world, breathless in its immediacy and more revolutionary than any field of tired monsters. Sin City breaks new ground, its imagery both driving the story and defining it. Function and form are collapsed here into one giant, blood-stained hand-cannon, and only the foolest of the fools would stop to wonder which came first, the pulp or its metafictional revelries. More than a comic book come to life, Sin City is the book's biggest fan telling you why he thinks you should read the book, too. And although you may appreciate his fervor, it's not quite enough to convert any but the already faithful.