Sin City – 2005, Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez
The art form of the graphic novel is in many ways the antecedent of the medium of film. They share a heavy use of pictures as a way of story telling, a way of communicating that mankind has used since cave drawings and hieroglyphics. For almost as long as there have been movies, there have been storyboards, still images used to plan a film in advance, to get an idea of the composition of a shot and set a visual tone for a scene. It’s surprising that, while there have been comic book adaptations before, no one has ever truly translated a piece from the page to the screen. Sure, Burton’s ‘Batman’ was inspired heavily by Frank Miller, sure we’ve had decades of comics in the cinema, but no one has taken a book and been so dedicated in running with it, to put the images as drawn onto film as close as possible. ‘Sin City’ does this, and it does it so well Rodriguez gave Frank Miller co-director credit. It pays off too, the film is amazing to look at. Almost every shot has had so much more time put into it than an average film, because Miller spent years doing what is normally done in months, storyboarding. The composition of every shot is stunning, the high contrast between black and white adding its share in the film’s delicious visuals. But Rodriguez knows you can’t just take a graphic novel and translate it directly, you can’t just have a series of still images. The movement and pace he adds cannot be overlooked, this is as much his work as Millers. Visuals aside, ‘Sin City’ has as much to offer everywhere else. The sound and music choices are spot on for a universe of eternal night, of a dingy, corrupt city of violence and sleaze. The dialogue is amazing; every line is a bit of Noir-poetry, as drenched in smoke and whiskey as the throats choking them out. Roark, Willis and Owen each handle this Uber-noir like it’s second nature, not once are the OTT remarks anything but awesome, even though in less capable hands they could just come out awful. Since there are three stories, there is a large ensemble cast, and each one takes what the three main guys are doing and match it, with Del Toro the highlight of the supporting characters. While all three tales are fantastic, Mickey Roark’s tour-de-force as Marv, a hulking ugly insane looser out for revenge in the first segment, Miller’s original ‘The Hard Goodbye’ is the real triumph, including the best visuals, performances and dialogue of the film. If you think Elijah Wood is just a cute little hobbit man, you’re very wrong. Kevin is perhaps the creepiest, most chilling film menace ever, hateable in every way but still a formidable foe. In fact the universe of ‘Sin City’ is so full of great characters; it’s hard to pull any out as superior. If there is anything wrong with the film, it is only that it drags inevitably when ‘Hard Goodbye’ is over, since only a handful of moments match it’s excellence through the other two yarns. But that is certainly no reason to mark the film down or declare it anything less than what it is, a triumph in film making and the true child of my favourite two mediums.
Best Moment: Hartigan lies in his hospital bed, riddled with tubes, hooked up to machines, and Senator Roark pays him a visit. It’s Powers Boothe’s only scene, but it best sums up what Sin City is and how it works in just a short monologue.
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