In theatre review: "Sin City"
A
How good is Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's new noir-action-thriller "Sin City"?
I saw it three times in 24 hours. That's six hours and 18 minutes spent soaked in the blood, sweat and never-ending rain of the merciless Basin City, held captive by its violent, seductive inhabitants.
The film takes three of the graphic novels of co-director Miller and uploads them to the screen in perhaps the most accurate comic-to-screen translation ever. Intense black and white is augmented with isolated colors -- mostly bright red gushing from severed limbs or pounded faces.
In the first tale, Marv (Mickey Rourke), an ugly, ex-con behemoth awakens to find the beautiful, kind Goldie (Jaime King) murdered in her sleep. Framed, he escapes the cops and proceeds to take shocking amounts of punishment as he "kills his way to the truth." Soon he encounters an Elijah Wood far from Frodo -- a sick, silent, spectacled serial killer continually one-upping Jeffrey Dahmer.
In my favorite segment, Clive Owen is Dwight, a man who gets involved with the prostitutes of "Old Town" -- well-armed hookers with an uneasy truce with the police that keeps them free of exploitive pimps and mobsters. This story features two of the film's most memorable characters, Gail (Rosario Dawson) --- the dominatrix prostitute leader --- and Miho (Devon Aoki), their sword and throwing star assassin. Both are absolutely to die for.
The final tale actually begins before the first two but plays out third. Detective John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) refuses to let young Nancy Callahan (first Makenzie Vega, later Jessica Alba) be the latest victim of the pedophile son (Nick Stahl) of a corrupt senator (Powers Boothe). The consequence for this is eight years wrongful imprisonment. When he gets out, the senator's son has become the disgusting Yellow Bastard and Nancy an exotic dancer.
This is compulsively entertaining stuff. Rodriguez has been one of the great, masterful action directors for over a decade. Take the best sequence from his "Desperado" --- the exhilarating barroom massacre where Antonio Banderas slaughters a dozen thugs. Stretch that level of badass cool and creative, intense violence across an entire film. That's "Sin City."
Oh is it ever intense. Forget Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" films. "Sin City" takes "Kill Bill," chops off its limbs, lets a wolf eat it alive and decapitates it. (Yeah, that's in there.)
But as much horror and evil as the film proudly displays --- try four castrations -- a steady dark humor frequently lifts the audience out of the dark tar pits. Miller and Rodriguez know the intensity of their material and that in order for it to work the audience cannot take it too seriously.
Most critics delivering negative reviews of the film miss the point. They see the slick style but declare that behind it there's no meaning. I don't buy that for a second. These are great characters with human drives and motivations. They're not empty shells; Rodriguez knows how to make an action film work: have skilled actors like Rourke, Owen and Dawson fill them with life. Without characters worth caring about, action and violence loses all charge and emotional resonance.
Heaven help me when "Sin City" hits the dollar theater. I might as well just abandon my color and move to Sin City right now.
For an extended review of "Sin City" visit http://swimmingincelluloid.blogspot.com
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