Sin City: The Review
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and its iconic denizens are steeped in the mystique of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond
Chandler and Mickey Spillane, and they all come to an equally stylized cinematic
life in the new film co-directed by Robert Rodriguez (Once Upon A Time In
Mexico) and Sin City creator Frank Miller. Love it, like it or hate
it, this movie may go down as the single most faithful comic book adaptation
filmed to date.
Bruce Willis, Clive Owen and Mickey Rourke head up could
be Hollywood’s biggest all-star cast since Irwin Allen stopped making disaster
movies, and if you’re a fan of the series published by Dark Horse Comics then
“disaster” will be about the furthest word from your mind. This film is dead-on,
fast-paced, bigger-than-life Sin City on the big screen. Three of Miller’s six
graphic novels in the series supply the interwoven stories for the film (there’s
also a collection of short stories, which is also dipped into), including The
Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill, and That Yellow Bastard.
When he started out his first Sin City story, Miller had it
planned as a 48-page one-shot. The rough-and-tumble crime noir story got away
from him, he said, and ended up as the first in a series of graphic novels. With
the number of writers, producers, directors and studios he turned down
previously (based at least in part on the experience he got writing a single
screenplay that showed up as parts of the screenplays for Robocop II and
Robocop III), it’s amazing that the film got made at all. But Rodriguez
undertook the Herculean task of convincing Miller and he was eventually able to
prevail. Miller, for his part, was afforded a basically unprecedented amount of
control, which reportedly was the deciding factor in the deal.
Sin City’s
not-so-bright tough guy lead character, Marv, blew the hinges off the
superheroes-only club when the story was first released and Mickey Rourke does
an amazing job with the character. Marv has a lot of lines that in the hands of
anyone less than 100% committed to them would have come off as corny. For him,
though, the dialogue works and after a few minutes you forget you’re watching a
guy with a ton of make-up and prosthetics on his head. He just gets deep into
Marv.
Likewise, Bruce Willis simply is Hartigan. He throws himself
into the role and doesn’t let go until he’s done. If someone doesn’t like this
character, they probably didn’t like the comic.
Clive Owen’s Dwight
McCarthy is the only one of the three main characters who suffers, and even then
it’s only marginally. Owen is stuck with two or three lines that read great in
the comics but come off stiff, corny or both in the film. This is further
accented by the supporting players in his scenes because they – just as in the
comics – have lines that sound more believable. These minor blips aren’t enough
to jar one out of the story; they’re just enough that you notice them. Over all,
Owen is great as Dwight. That’s good because should this movie prove a hit,
Miller’s A Dame To Kill For is a likely candidate for a sequel (that
story centers on Dwight McCarthy).
The bottom line question is “Will
people who haven’t read the comic book like Sin City the movie?” Dimension (the
studio) is banking on mainstream audiences opening up to Sin City.
Rodriguez’s track record of bringing films in on time and under budget helps the
economic scales, and his penchant for developing instant cult-hit action movies
gives them a reasonable base from which to work. Of course it’s impossible to
come up with the answer to that question a week before the film’s official
release, but there are some pointers.
First, Dimension is a label of
notoriously thrifty Miramax, yet they’re spending a lot of money promoting this
film (By their standards it’s more than “a lot;” they usually wait until they’ve
picked up an Oscar or major festival win to really pump a movie
up).
Second, the press screening was two weeks before the release. In
film circles, that generally means confidence, the kind of confidence that hopes
to get a good review in the weekend guide type publications larger newspapers
put in their Thursday editions.
Third, the number of stars involved in
the making of this film virtually guarantees that there will be a continued hard
sell of infotainment media.
So, that said, it really comes down to the
early word of mouth and the critics.
Rodriguez’s work in Sin City
is highly stylized, but not to the point of alienating fans of his
Desperadoes or Once Upon A Time In Mexico work. In fact, it’s only
slightly more stylized (yet much more consistent in tone) than From Dusk Till
Dawn. The stylization works in his favor. Miller’s trick of using black and
white art with spot colors for emphasis is superbly utilized by Rodriguez. It
calls attention to various elements, but the fact that the sometimes copious
amounts of blood show up as stark white on the screen drastically dampens the
gross-out effect while nonetheless conveying the essence of the scenes. Less
gross-out, quite frankly, means wider accessibility for general
audiences.
The photography is crisp and rarely calls attention to the
fact that virtually all of backgrounds are, well, virtual. Most of the scenes in
the film were shot in front of a green screen and the backgrounds were added as
CGI. While Sky Captain broke the ground in this area, Sin City has
achieved the first real level of perfection with it.
Sin City is a fun
movie. It doesn’t take itself seriously, but it doesn’t make itself a joke
either. It will be interesting to see how it does at the box office – if they
mainstream accepts this one, it could signal a real boom for indy comics hitting
the silver screen.
NEXT UP?
Robert Rodriguez will release The
Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl this summer in 3-D. The
writer-director-producer-composer-editor regularly alternates between all-ages
films such as his Spy Kids series and older audience pieces like Sin
City, and this one’s definitely for the kids. In fact, he co-created it with
one of his sons.
Frank Miller is writing All-Star Batman for DC
Comics, with Jim Lee illustrating. He has reportedly said that he’s mulling over
a return to Sin City comics.
Dark Horse Comics has re-released five of
the seven Sin City volumes in a new, manga-size format (the other two are
pending). Over the last few weeks in our “Off The Presses” section of Scoop,
we’ve given you reviews of the first five:
THE HARD
GOODBYE
http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=7778&si=129
A
DAME TO KILL FOR
http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=7865&si=129
THE
BIG FAT KILL
http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=7866&si=129
THAT
YELLOW BASTARD
http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=7904&si=129
FAMILY
VALUES
http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=7903&si=129
Here
are some links to other interesting information on Sin
City:
Sin City Update (Background on Rodriguez and
Miller)
http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/scoop_article.asp?ai=6450&si=124
Yahoo
Offers Sin City Featurette
http://movies.yahoo.com/movies/feature/sincity.html
ICv2.com
Reports on Sin City Book Sales
http://icv2.com/articles/home/6600.html
IGN.com
Reports on Sin City PlayStation 2 Game
http://ps2.ign.com/articles/594/594074p1.html?fromint=1