Movie Reviews
In one of the most daringly original films of recent years, director Robert Rodriguez has revived and remade film noir for a new generation, and I for one am very appreciative for that fact. Frank Miller’s “Sin City” comic books have been given motion and put on a big screen, nothing more really. It’s just that, and I loved every minute of it.
But to give you a total synopsis of the movie would be to waste both your and my time with an endless barrage of meaningless character names, traits, and attributions. Meaningless because you’d just have to see the movie for it to make any sense. So I’ll settle with this: “Sin City” stars Bruce Willis as a hardened cop who is chasing a pedophile (Nick Stahl) from raping and killing Nancy (Jessica Alba). In a whole other story, Mickey Rourke is mostly a good guy, but seems bad at first glance. He’s after the killer (Elijah Wood) of Goldie (Jaime King), a prostitute who had come to him for safety. Yet again, a whole other story involves Clive Owen on the trail of a sadist (Benicio Del Toro) from starting a war with the leader of a large band of whores (Rosario Dawson) and their negotiations with the police. In between, Michael Clarke Duncan, Brittany Murphy, Josh Hartnett, and Powers Boothe somehow take center stage for a few moments at a time.
I found that that is the precise reason the film works. Small characters dominate for just a flash, juxtaposed with the principle actors, and then we’re back to the story. This is a fast-paced spectacle reliant on style and action, yes, but caught up so much in Frank Miller’s storytelling, that the style could be eliminated, and this would still be good. Miller uses that famous noir dialogue that was always used in the 40s and 50s and the actors say it in an almost funny way. The thing about noir narrative is that it is the only form of swashbuckling that works all the time. Miller knows that, Rodriguez grasps it – sometimes having a character narrate up and even after their own death.
Which brings me to the subject of the style of the film. In reading the rating, you can infer that this is, in fact, a very violent movie. Your assumption would be correct. But notice the word “stylized”. We have a film that is in black and white, except for blood and cars and certain important characters at certain important moments. That black and white is what keeps us from vomiting from the gratuitous violence, which is at times so stylized that it wants us to laugh. I know it wants us to laugh because Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino were behind the camera.
That’s right, Tarantino got his chance to work with green screen, putting characters in a totally fake environment. (His scene is the one with Benicio Del Toro and Clive Owen in the car.) Rodriguez urged him to try it, and he did. It's no surprise that the film is structured much like "Pulp Fiction".
The film is incredibly, remarkably self-aware – not to the audience, but to itself. It knows that many of the decisions of the characters are lamentable. It understands that the look carries a sense of paranoia. It comprehends just how far the violence goes, and how to save our bowels by muting it very tastefully – most of the time.
“Sin City” is reeking of creativity, swimming in a pool of pure coolness and sophistication. Sophistication toward its overstated characters, toward its cinematography, toward its sound, toward its look, toward its filmmaking and how much it has change that very thing. This is a film unlike anything your eyes have ever feasted on, as entertaining and awesome as the cinema gets. And Rodriguez, who photographed, produced, edited, wrote, directed, and composed the music for the movie, more than deserves a spot in film history. ****