Sin City (2005)
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
Welcome to Sin City. This town beckons to the tough, the corrupt, the brokenhearted. Some call it dark… Hard-boiled. Then there are those who call it home — Crooked cops, sexy dames, desperate vigilantes. Some are seeking revenge, others lust after redemption, and then there are those hoping for a little of both. A universe of unlikely and reluctant heroes still trying to do the right thing in a city that refuses to care.
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28 films that influenced Sin City
What critics say influenced Sin City
Tarantino also contributed something to the culture of the film, which follows his influential " Pulp Fiction " in its recycling of pop archetypes and its circular story structure.
There was talk that this was the next “ Pulp Fiction ,” that the ‘00s had their first generation-defining movie.
Here, Rodriguez and Miller adapt three of the original stories, weaving them together like the three sections of Tarantino's bent magnum opus "Pulp Fiction."
Rodriguez clearly assumes Sin City to be his Pulp Fiction, his rambling portmanteau--a blending of disparate tales to form a complete, overwhelming epic.
Like Pulp Fiction 11 years ago, Sin City seems poised to be a classic amongst scholarly film enthusiasts, comic book fanatics and pop culture junkies, which means it will probably also spawn a string of pale imitators.
With the return of Willis’ cop character for the final half-hour, the directors’ desire to dovetail the stories in “Pulp Fiction” mode becomes clear.
The cinema-class allusions (razor-eye: Buñuelâs Un Chien Andalou; aging cop: name your Clint Eastwood movie) combine neatly with Sin Cityâs strikingly original lookânot a knockoff of film noir, but footage thatâs inky black and iridescent white, with occasional tiny, surprising splashes of color (the blue eyes of the hooker played by Gilmore Girlsâ Alexis Bledel; Owenâs bloodred Converse sneakers).
But the film belongs to Rourke, who makes Marv into the epitome of the crime movie 20-watt muscle, channeling Sterling Hayden from "The Asphalt Jungle" and every role Mike Mazurki ever played.
Prior to Sin City, there had been the half-steps of George Lucas's Star Wars prequels, both of which (in those glory days, there was merely a "both", and we could still hold out hope that he'd right things) involved extensive use of CGI set-building; and in 2004, Kerry Conran wrote and directed Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow , the first American film with 100% digitally-created backdrops for its human actors to interact with; or rather, not to.
Sin City is an amazing, innovative, new way of storytelling using technology we’ve seen botched into boredom in movies like Sky Captain and both the dubiously enjoyed Star Wars prequels.
George Lucas has done the same thing with the last two Star Wars films and Kerry Conran did the same thing with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, but Rodriguez has one-upped them on two levels.
There's nothing rough about Sin City the film, which was shot on controlled green-screen environments with the same best-that-money-can-buy HDCAMs George Lucas used for Episode III (and boasts the same kind of glassy-eyed, disconnected performances that plagues the new Star Wars pictures).
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Miller always intended his Sin City stories to be sprawlingly cinematic: He began writing them after Hollywood butchered his RoboCop 2 screenplay, turning back to the comic page that allowed him complete freedom.
Robert Rodriguez directed the film ("El Mariachi," "Desperado," "From Dusk Till Dawn"), and also shot and edited it, with co-directing help from Miller ("Robocop 2," "Daredevil," "Elektra") and Quentin Tarantino ("Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction," "Kill Bill"), without whose pioneering "Pulp Fiction" this present film would probably never have been made.
There's more to come of this story, but attention switches to the meatiest and most memorable part of the triology, with an unrecognizable Mickey Rourke under pounds of makeup - in his best performance since "Barfly" - as Marv, a hulking street tough who goes on a bloody, vengeance-filled rampage after a kindly hooker named Goldie (Jaime King) turns up dead in his bed.
Those are the bare-bones stories, but Rodriguez and Miller (who share co-director credit on the film, to the reported consternation of the Directors Guild of America) both understand that film noir is a matter of style and atmosphere rather than plot—even the best of classic films noir (Laura, Out of the Past, The Big Sleep, etc.) have stories that don’t always stand up to close inspection.
Other comic adaptations (Sam Raimi's Spider-Man comes to mind) were able to transcend their funny-pages origins while paying deep and abiding homage to them.
Those who expect a piece of wholesome movie entertainment along the lines of "Spider-Man" are in for a rude awakening.
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Rodriguez is arrogantly proud of the way his movie so faithfully bows to the "genius" of Miller and re-creates his comic-book world with the same kind of religious devotion Gus Van Sant paid to Hitchcock with his frame-for-frame "Psycho" remake.
Miller's post-"Kiss Me Deadly" world of hard guys, rich degenerates, hookers, hired killers and crooked cops looks even better as a movie, shot in gleaming black and white with bursts of blood red and gold.