Sin City

While the new Robert Rodriguez film, Frank Miller’s Sin City, is not a horror movie, it isn’t not a horror movie. (Yep, I got A’s in English.) One of the coolest things about this tres cool movie is, you can’t pigeonhole it. Punching, kicking and slashing its way through every genre imaginable — chiefly film noir, comic, mystery, action, drama, romance, and thriller — Sin City has more severed heads, dismemberments and cannibalism themes than The Silence of the Lambs and Freddy Vs. Jason put together. I loved it!

It is based on author/illustrator Miller's series of graphic novels of the same name. The plotlines include elements from the stories The Babe Wore Red, The Hard Goodbye, That Yellow Bastard, and more. Like the phantasmagoric storybooks, the lush yet stark look of the movie is achieved by using satiny black and white enhanced with splashes of color. Early buzz has Miller’s fans thinking that only Miller fans will glom onto the cinematic Sin City. Not so — I’d never read or even saw one of his books in my life before viewing this dark delight, yet I was on board from start to finish. It’s only April 1, but I can easily say that Sin City is undoubtedly one of the best films of the year.

A metropolis bled morally dry, Basin City is the site of three torrid tales that follow several larger than life characters through their lives and, for some of them, their deaths. Each one is a man on a mission that takes him down a rabbit hole to an urban nightmare of seedy alleys, strip clubs, into cheap motel rooms, and around winding back roads to rescue, defend, or avenge a woman.

Hartigan (Bruce Willis) is a no-nonsense cop who, after saving a little girl (Makenzie Vega) from a brutal child-rapist named Junior (Nick Stahl), is punished for his good deed and spends the next ten years in a solitary prison cell. Once released, Hartigan has cause to thank heaven for the little girl who’s grown up in the most delightful way: Nancy (Jessica Alba) is now a lasso-swinging exotic dancer who’s fallen deeply in love with him. But Hartigan and Nancy’s troubles start all over again when Junior reemerges (now as a Max Schreck/Nosferatu styled creep called Yellow Bastard).

Marv (Mickey Rourke) has a churlish countenance, but at his center is a heart of Goldie — Goldie (Jaime King) being the pulchritudinous prostitute who was murdered after their one glorious night together. Marv makes it his quest to hunt down and kill her killer. This is the flagship story, and it’s wonderfully infused with Rourke’s pervading presence (though they might should have lightened up on the prosthetics a tad; he doesn’t look like a real person).

Another story in the anthology follows Dwight (Clive Owen), a red Converse-wearing, trench-coated Weegee’esque newspaper photographer who has a hand in committing a most unfortunate murder and then must go to great lengths (and depths!) to cover it up.

While the anthology ostensibly follows its male residents, Sin City would be dull indeed without its firecracker female characters. Following film noir and classic detective novel convention, the women are kicked as often as they’re kissed — but they give as good as they get. Dangerous dames line the city’s highrise rooftops like beautiful but deadly gargoyles, protecting their turf from all comers. Tough cookies, hookers, strippers, and cocktail waitresses abound, as do Kill Bill styled assassins (Devon Aoki’s “Miho” would give Chiaki Kuriyama’s “Gogo” a real run for her blood money), barely-clad lesbians, and the female trophies of a literal head-hunter. Miho’s pimp is played with fishnet panache by Rosario Dawson.

The Big Sleep wakes up in a hi-def, CGI world with glorious results, akin to film noir on acid. Rodriguez famously chronicled bootstrap moviemaking methodology in his book, Rebel Without A Crew; while he certainly had a lot of help with Sin City (Miller co-directs and cameos as a priest, while Quentin Tarantino also helms a short, gruesomely comic passage), you can definitely see his stamp here. You can hear it, too — as per usual, he composed most of the score himself. Even with his cinematography, Rodriguez faithfully reproduces the chiaroscuro palette of Miller’s novels. The screenplay (also credited to Mr. R… does this guy do the catering, too?) tempers the characters’ cynicism with believable flashes of hope and sentiment.

Dialogue and 40s pulp noir voiceovers are punctuated with clichés and gallows humor even as explosive, stylized violence unfolds onscreen. The cast of dozens all nosh the scenery, even when they don’t have a word to say — the mute, lethal and utterly vile villain, Kevin (Elijah Wood), is a character you won’t soon forget. Smaller roles with Rutger Hauer, Carla Gugino, and Powers Boothe are also sure to resonate with audiences.

A famous line from a classic noir film matter-of-factly says, “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.” Sin City has at least three, but here’s hoping for more in the future.

[ Don't forget to check out Horror.com's exclusive videos and pictures from the Sin City premiere, interviews with the cast, and more by clicking here! ] 

Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson