Sin City   

Hartigan: Bruce Willis

Marv: Mickey Rourke

Nancy Callahan: Jessica Alba

Dwight: Clive Owen

Rourk, Jr.: Nick Stahl

Gail: Rosario Dawson

Jackie Boy: Benicio Del Toro

Goldie/Wendy: Jaime King

Directed by Robert Rodriguez

and Frank Miller

Special Guest Director: Quentin Tarantino

Screenplay by Robert Rodriguez

Based on the graphic novels created by

Frank Miller

In the opening scene of Sin City, we see a beautiful but unhappy woman adorned in a red dress and red lipstick walk out alone on a balcony, trailed by a young man offering company and solace.  After kissing, the man pulls out a gun and kills the woman while still in her embrace, expressing uncertainty at what the reasons behind her death were.  

Director Robert Rodriguez perfectly sets up the film with this scene as the camera pans away to reveal the city below and an indication of what is to come. 

Rodriguez weaves a tapestry of violence, sex, corruption, death and love effortlessly.  And he does it in a striking visual style.  Sin City is filmed in black-and-white with brief flashes of color (mainly red) that hint at the beauty, brutality and ugliness that lurk beneath each person living in Basin City.  It is a visual feast and entirely fascinating to watch at every turn. 

The narrative consists of three separate stories that are, for the most part, unrelated.  Some characters pop up occasionally throughout the film, but mainly to serve as a backdrop and reference point rather than a key plot element. 

Each story revolves around a similar central theme.  An intrepid man goes out of his way to protect a woman he loves.  Fortunately, the women in Sin City are not merely hapless victims, but are strong characters that can easily take care of themselves.  In fact the strength of the women is what sustains them in each story.  The force with which the prostitutes use to protect Old Town and the resolve of young Nancy Callahan are just a couple of examples. 

The first act tells the story of Marv, a hulking beast of a man practically impervious to pain.  He spends the night and falls in love with Goldie, a prostitute who is silently murdered that night while asleep.  Marv sets out to exact revenge on this killer and stops at nothing to get answers about who is responsible. 

Mickey Rourke slips into the role of Marv perfectly, to the point where you aren’t even sure it’s him, and creates a wonderfully complex portrait of an uncomplicated man.  Despite the brutal nature of his methods of “fact-finding” and torture, his simple-mindedness makes him a sympathetic hero who takes it upon himself to protect the women he cares about. 

The second story deals with Dwight and the hookers of Old Town.  For years a truce with the cops has allowed the hookers to protect their own turf.  But after killing cop Jack Rafferty one night; they realize that everything they have could come crashing back down to a world of pimps and the mob.  Dwight, played with a steely resolve by Clive Owen, helps the women try to get rid of the bodies to keep hidden what they have done. 

This story is perhaps the most noirish of them all and crackles with sharp dialogue throughout.  The most inspired scene of the entire film finds Dwight imagining a conversation with the dead body of Jack (Benicio Del Toro) as it sits next to him in the car.  A conscience-ridden test about what Dwight must ultimately do. 

The final act of the movie finishes the story of detective Hartigan (Bruce Willis), who in the first few minutes of the movie we see saving an 11-year-old girl from a prolific child molester.  He is framed for the heinous acts and is held in solitary confinement for eight years, sustained only by the weekly letters of Nancy, the girl he saved. 

He finally gets out to find Nancy (Jessica Alba) again, all grown up and living as an exotic dancer while studying law.  Their mutual love and admiration for each other sustains them in one last fight for their lives against Yellow Bastard.   

The depth of every single character in this film is a testament to the directors of Sin City (Frank Miller is a co-director and Quentin Tarantino shows up as a “special guest director”).  The ability to flesh out these people in a relatively short amount of time gives a soul to the technical wizardry behind the film. 

I’m not all that familiar with the graphic novels of Frank Miller upon which this film is based, but there is a unique poetry here in the stories and the dialogue that shows itself once the violence and the gore are peeled away.  Could love really be the driving force behind all this madness or is it the one thing that prevents the city from devolving into a fate worse than Hell?  I don’t know if this movie sets out to make such a profound statement, but it is a question that becomes hard to avoid.