Sin City (DVD)

While Sin City isn’t exactly a horror movie, it is one that definitely appeals to fans of the genre — it’s long on violence, gore, and acts of shocking taboo. When I saw it in the theater, I was blown away and knew for sure I’d be adding the DVD to my collection. While the film itself is reason enough to buy it, I must confess being a bit disappointed in the disk. But more on that later…

The film Sin City 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.

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.

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 finesse by a racy 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.

Dialogue and 40s pulp noir voiceovers are punctuated with clichés and gallows humor even as explosive, stylized violence unfolds. 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.

Not that you’ll be able to forget — there are two back-to-back sequels scheduled to begin production next year, and surely this DVD release is only the tip of the iceberg to a myriad of special editions, uncut editions, director’s editions, etc., etc. Rumor has it that the next edition will feature deleted scenes, a commentary from Rodriguez and Miller, plus the option to play the movie in three parts (to follow just Hartigan, Dwight, or Marv).

As it stands there is only one extra goodie on this first edition of Sin City. There is just one lonely “making of featurette” that runs for less than 10 minutes. It includes panel-to-screen comparisons, plus comments from the films’ three directors. The interactive menus are cool, looking just like pages out of a Miller comic, and the DVD will sell in four different slipcovers, each featuring a different graphic. (See them here.)

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Be sure and check out Horror.com’s exclusive interviews with Rodriquez and the cast here.