Movie Review: Sin City

If you liked Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill you'll like Sin City, but you probably already knew that. It's based on the Frank Miller graphic novels of the same name. Frank Miller became popular in comics in the 80s working on Daredevil, Ronin and then Batman: The Dark Knight. He deconstructs the characters and stories to minimalist form. His art was very rough though quite inventive in breaking free of the boundaries of panels. Over the years it got rougher to the point that I found flipping through Sin City comics was similar to looking at ink blot tests. It was pure black and white with slight bits of color and reduced the scenes to suggestions of shapes or actions.

Roberto Rodriguez was apparently a big fan of the comics and wanted to do a live action film based on them. He used the comics as a story boards and recreated the panels in the film. He did this to the extent that he wanted to give Frank Miller directing credit though the director's guild objected so Rodriguez resigned from the guild. The effect is amazing, a mostly black and white film often without even greys but with a few items in vivid color (a red dress, blue eyes, a red car, etc.) It was shot almost entirely on blue screen but it works much better than the Star Wars prequels, the actors are all strong though often they're just asked to emote. A deconstructed comic becomes film noir and boring rehashed comic book dialog (Miller wrote Robocop 2) becames good mood setting voice overs which advance the story to the next scene. The joy of this film is the visuals.

The three Tarentino-style intertwined stories you'll find either iconic noir or completely disgusting and stupid. You'll need to be able to deal with human bodies as meat to be butchered, there's lot of shootings, dismemberments, beatings, etc. (though often out of frame). The blood is usually shown as pools of solid white (or for one character yellow) and last as long as a glance at a comic panel. I was expecting much worse from the reviews I read before but the film certains earns its R rating. The stories have enough turns to keep them intestesting and while the characters are all crime bosses, thugs and prostitutes every action is either pure evil or heroic. Deconstruction indeed. This isn't as much fun as Pulp Fiction, but it kept me involved for two hours and I'm glad I saw it. And I'm looking forward to seeing the next step in cinematography's evolution.