Every man’s a crook and every woman a w-hore. Welcome to Sin City.
Graphic Film Noir
Sin City is based on Frank Miller’s series of graphic novels of the same name. The graphic, here, doesn’t refer just to the drawings. Characters get tortured, maimed, cut, chopped, killed, and eaten! If you are squeamish about violence and blood, the movie’s definitely not for you. Sin City is a ferocious carnival of blood and gore. Blood gets splattered in gallons onscreen and people die in dozens.
May be the reason to stay away. May be the reason to stay put.
Every gutter h-ole has a story to tell
’Sin City’ is based mainly on three different short stories - ’The Hard Good-Bye’, ’The Big-Fat Kill’, ’That Yellow B-astard’(TYB). The stories don’t happen in the same time, and mostly unrelated. The only connections being certain characters appearing in more than one story; especially bar girl Shelli (Britanny Murphy) who appears in all three! And, of course, the (Ba)Sin City - it’s locations and roads, corrupt cops, despotic politicians and the crooked clergy - is a character unto itself. The lousy Saloon - Kadie’s Joint, the OldTown run by a gang of vigilante prostitutes and the sinister Roark family farm, provide the vortex around which the stories grow.
The movie flows in a non-linear fashion. It begins with ’That Yellow B-astard’. Bruce Willis, as John Hartigan - a honest upright cop, tries to protect a 11 year old girl from the clutches of paedophilic son of Senator Roark, on his retirement day. It suddenly jumps over to ’The Hard Good-Bye’, the Sin City getting torn apart under the murderous rage of Marv (Mickey Rourke), an ex-Con, out to find the killers of his hooker girlfriend Goldie (Jaime King). Moves on to join Dwight McCarthy (Clive Owen) in saving OldTown from the machinations of the mob and the rage of the police, in ’Big Fat Kill’. A jump back to ’Yellow B-astard’ as Hartigan completes unfinished business. And a final cleanup to the ’Fat Kill’.
(For the interested, pre-beginning-credits scene is from a fourth story ’Customer Is Always Right’. The same chap appears at climax. Also the family name ’Roark’ is a takeoff on fabled hero Howard Roark of Ayn Rand’s FountainHead )
Sinfilled Details
Miller’s also the producer, co-director, and the writer of the movie. He’s also done a cameo as the priest who gets bumped by Rourke in the church confessional. Directed by Robert Rodriguez of ’Spy-Kids’ fame. Honorary directorial credits go to Quentin Tarantino, who directed a scene to oblige his buddy Rodriguez. The scene where Dwight drives Jackie Boy to the pits, till the cop stops him. He did it for just $1! It’s the only scene, in the whole movie, where the characters, Dwight and the dead man Jacki Boy mouth their dialogues. Else where the internal monologues were dubbed in later.
It’s perfect film noir. The entire movie was shot with High-Definition Digital cameras. Entire film is in Black & white, with an occasional person, scene or object shown in color. The usage of color, over B&W, is brilliant and manifolds the effectiveness of the scenes. It’s interesting to note that only a few of the scenes were shot in real hand-built sets. Rest of them shot with a green background, replaced later by digital backgrounds (a technique called ’’digital backlot’’). Extra ordinary efforts were taken in filming the ’white blood’. Red flourescent liquid was bathed in black light and turned white in post-production. The Yellow B-astard was originally shot painted in blue color, as yellow was interacting with the green background. Blue was later replaced with ghostly yellow.
Sin City proudly boasts of a distinguished cast of Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Jessica Alba, Jaime King, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro etc. Actors were carefully selected, not only for their renown, also for their resemblance to comic book characters. Their looks further enhanced by makeup and prosthetics. Every actor without exceptions has acted his/her role fine. I specially liked Mickey Rourke as Marv, his appearance, dialogue delivery, and action scenes involving him.
Jaime King (Goldie/Wendy) and Carla Lugino (parole officer Lucille) provide a visual nirvana of raunchy scenes. Jessica Alba’s character too had lots of nude scenes. But she refused to do them.
Worth going to Hell for?
To paraphrase Marv - ’I don’t know about you, but I had a ball’.
Sin City will soon return with two more sequels. Part 2 in 2006 with the same team and Part 3 (Hell & Back) in 2008. Efforts are on to sign-on Johnny Depp as a lead actor in Hell & Back as per the rumours. If Miller and Rodriguez can pull it, it would be quite a coup !
Till then keep your fingers crossed, or else the dude will bury his hatchet deep in your face.