There is perhaps no greater example of a film intensely close to its source material than 2005’s Sin City. Directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez (as well as special guest Quentin Tarantino), this movie is an ocular feast that recreates the visuals contained on the pages of Miller’s graphic novel series with careful attention to detail and a passionate eye.
Primarily based around three of Miller’s works (“The Hard Goodbye,” “The Big Fat Kill,” and “That Yellow Bastard”), Sin City takes viewers down to the depths and dregs of humanity with relentless glee. The despair, gloom, and lust flows through the streets of Basin City like rainwater through Metro Vancouver and Rodriguez excitedly captures all of the action with his expert directorial vision. I still say he’s one of the best working today for creating visual feasts and intelligent, witty stories. In the case of Sin City, Rodriguez is aided by Miller in the director’s chair.
Miller was reluctant to sell the rights to Sin City at first because he had seen what had happened to RoboCop 3, which he supplied the screenplay and story for. Rodriguez had been a fan of the graphic novels for Sin City for a long time, however, and wanted to make it into a film. He aimed to make a “translation, not an adaptation” of the piece and was eventually able to sell Miller on his authentic vision. Rodriguez famously shot a “proof of concept” adaptation of the storyline “The Customer is Always Right” (which is in the film as the Josh Hartnett/Marley Shelton sequence) and invited Miller to the test shooting. Miller was impressed and Rodriguez invited Miller to be a part of the project as much as possible. The rest is history.
Sin City marks one of the first films (along with the terrible Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow) to be filmed primarily on a digital backlot. Rodriguez used the Sony HDC-950 high-def digital camera and had the actors work in front of a green screen, allowing for artificial backgrounds to be added during post-production. This style of filming allowed for more authenticity on the project, as frames from Miller’s graphic novels were then used as the ultimate prototype to constructing the scenes. Finding natural backgrounds that “matched” the settings in Basin City wasn’t a concern, as Rodriguez could simply create something out of thin air.
The allure of Sin City comes not only because of the incredible visual style, but also from the story. Known for his support of some neo-conservative ideas and his exploration of violence, Frank Miller’s writing has always had a hard edge to it. Sin City is perhaps the ultimate realization of that hard edge, as each story contains brutal violence and a tone of despair and hopelessness. The heroes, if there are any, are drawn from the depths of society and are killers, hookers, and lowlifes. The notion of “sin” in Miller’s Sin City is drawn in just about every scene from the character’s justification for their actions.
The film uses several A-list celebs and packs them into Basin City right next to the hookers and pimps of the stark, wet, bloody streets. Clive Owen, Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Devon Aoki, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro, Powers Boothe, Nick Stahl, Michael Madsen, Jaime King, Carla Gugino, Brittany Murphy, Josh Hartnett, Marley Shelton, Michael Clarke Duncan, Elijah Wood, and Rutger Hauer all have significant roles in the film.
Writing about the stories in Sin City in the context of a review is almost senseless, as the stories are merely a part of the whole project and don’t represent what Rodriguez and Miller’s film is about. It’s about the whole, not merely the sum of its parts. It’s about the despair and the almost existential hopelessness that fills the streets of Basin City. It’s about how the characters get lost and never found, about how justice struggles to keep up but never quite gets there, it’s about how the cycle of violence and sin never ends. Perhaps these ideas are all manifestations of Miller’s own personal philosophies, as though he almost realizes that his ideologies have no happy endings. Maybe life has no happy endings…
Regardless of how Sin City is viewed, it is a visual treat and an assault on the senses. Every frame in the film contributes to the overall arc of tone being presented here. There is no wasted shot, no throwaway moment, no verbal diarrhea, and no sparse narrative. It’s all part of the plan for Rodriguez and Co. There are some weak links in some performances and the bleakness can be overwhelming at points, as can the violence. Overall, however, Sin City is one hell of a project and represents a new direction in cinema.
9/10
Trailer:
