Sin City

The movie based on three of Frank Miller’s seven volume graphic novels Sin City has just hit a cinema near you. It seems to be the month of book-to-film adaptations, with the likes of DC Comic’s Batman: Begins (which rocks!!) and Marvel’s Fantastic Four (don’t forget to play the ‘Spot the Stan Lee’ game), but I must say, Sin City easily takes the cake and is literally a work of art.
Shot and cut by one of my favourite directors, Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi Trilogy, From Dusk Till Dawn), he also brings along friend Quentin Tarantino as ‘guest director’ for one of the scenes.
Miller was quite skeptical about adapting his graphic novels to film – afraid that they would be ‘Hollywood-ised’, but when Rodriguez showed him his vision, Miller ended up co-directing, which helps add authenticity to the film, and they’re both working on Sin City 2 - due out next year and Sin City 3 – penned in for 2008! Frank Miller has written and penciled for both Marvel and DC Comics, working on DareDevil and X-Men and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. He also co-created Robocop.
With one of the biggest line-ups I’ve seen in a long time – Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, an unrecognizable Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Michael Madsen, Brittany Murphy, Rosario Dawson, Clive Owen, Elijah Wood, Nick Stahl, Josh Hartnett, Devon Aoli, the list goes on – it is a film most not to be missed.
The film is shot in black and white, which makes you feel like you are reading one of the novels. Freeze any frame and it could be a page straight out of the book. The only colour is the occasional flash of red on a dress or a pair of shoes, the green in a pair of eyes, the yellow jaundiced skin of one of the bad guys.
The movie is dark, ultra-violent and full of black humour with many of the characters hell-bent on dishing out their own unique style of vigilante justice. Mickey Rourke plays Marv, a giant of a man who doesn’t think he’s quite all there, framed for the murder of Goldie, a high-class prostitute and the only woman to care about him. Throughout his part in the movie he sustains numerous injuries (being on the wrong side of guns, baseball bats…) that would have left the average movie hero – well - dead, but Marv, much like Miller’s Robocop, only gets stronger. And many of the bad guys end up with a few less appendages than what they started with.
Clive Owen is fantastic as Dwight, a Private Eye out for the blood of Jackie Boy (Del Toro). After Jackie Boy is shot, Dwight teams up with the warrior-like prostitutes of Basin City’s Old Town, to help stop the inevitable war between the women and the police. Rosario Dawson is Gail - the leader of the prostitutes, dressed in leather with matching firearm accessories. This is where Tarantino comes in to direct a scene between Dwight and Jackie Boy, racing in a car with a trunk full of bodies.
The final story is with Hartigan (Willis), an old cop with a bad ticker. In the beginning of the movie, we see Hartigan save an eleven year old Nancy Callahan from a yellow-skinned, child molester with family in high places. Eight years later Nancy (now played by Jessica Alba) is working as a stripper one of the local bars and is still being hunted down.
Robert Rodriguez fans – look out for his next flick The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3D – coming soon!