Sin City

Reel Critic Grade: B+ Running Time: 124 minutes Rated: R

With a name like Sin City I didn’t go to the theatre looking for puppies and love songs, but I also didn’t expect the relentless onslaught of ultra-violence and moral depravity that splashed across the screen for more than two hours.

Hordes of people were shot repeatedly, savagely beaten, blown to bits, tortured, cut in pieces, run through with various implements, drowned, beheaded, and there was enough skin to fill a Playboy mag. I’ve seen these things before in other films, but Sin City crams all of them into a single sitting and fires them at you like bullets from a machine gun. When it was over I had the strong desire to take a shower and watch, It’s a Wonderful Life. That said - Sin City is a remarkable film.

Frank Miller’s graphic novels were the source material for this cutting-edge endeavor. What’s unique and impressive about Sin City’s adaptation, is that co-directors Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi and Spy kids Trilogies, From Dusk Till Dawn) and Miller himself literally plucked the images from the comic pages and put them in motion.

Unlike other film versions of popular comic books - Spiderman, The Hulk, Daredevil - Sin City looks, feels, and acts like a graphic novel; it’s shot in black and white, has extensive voice over narration (like white bubbles of dialogue), and is filled with larger-than-life characters who defy the physics (and just about everything else) of the real world. It’s an incredible artistic vision like nothing I’ve ever seen.

The film is a Tarantino-like mingling of three (maybe four) of Miller’s stories. The first has Bruce Willis playing a cop with a bad ticker, on the day of his retirement, as he tracks down the pedophile son of a Senator (Nick Stahl) who has a young girl in his grasp. The second follows Marv (Mickey Rourke), a lifetime loser whose head could be mistaken for a half-carved block of wood.

Marv wakes up next to a dead prostitute, the only woman who ever showed him kindness, and sets out to find her killer at any cost. The third involves an ex-con with a new face named, Dwight (Clive Owen), defending his recently acquired girlfriend (Brittany Murphy) from her abusive ex, Jackie Boy (a hard to recognize, Benicio Del Toro).

Finally (and this is where I’m confused as to this being a separate Miller story or not), the film has a pair of bookend vignettes involving Josh Harnett as a seductive assassin. The stories are stand alones, but they intertwine just enough to give the film a sense of continuity.

The over-the-top violence caught me off guard, but what’s fascinating is that it’s never gratuitous. It fits. Sin City is a character like Bruce Willis’ cop and Mickey Rourke’s Marv. The cruel brutality that takes place in its streets, buildings, and outskirts is part of who it is. If the viciousness and bloodshed wasn’t there, it wouldn’t be Sin City.

There is enough star power in this film to operate an electric chair. In addition to those mentioned above, there is Rosario Dawson, Jessica Alba, Elijah Wood, Michael Madsen, and Michael Clark Duncan. The most notable performance of the film is Mickey Rourke. A huge Hollywood presence in the 80s and 90s, Rourke’s been relatively absent in recent years. His leading man roles have been scaled back to smaller supporting parts.

However, his gritty portrayal of the hard-charging Marv will likely do for him what Pulp Fiction did for the then sidelined, John Travolta. In other words, we’ll be seeing a lot more of Mickey Rourke in the next few years. Jessica Alba is the other actor of note, but for just the opposite reasons. Alba has been talked up for her looks and acting ability ever since she strutted onto the television and movie scene.

Although I agree she can be a looker, her turn in Sin City warrants a confession (well, everything except the pole dancing). I can’t remember the last time I watched a veteran actor deliver lines as flat and lifeless as Alba. Just goes to show, looks aren’t everything.

Sin City is the kind of fresh creative endeavor that affirms our love for film and its endless possibilities. At the same time, it’s a dark, dark film that certainly won’t appeal to everyone. Its look at the evil side of life will keep many from venturing inside the multiplex, and I suspect a number that do give it a shot, will wish they’d kept driving past this sinister metropolis.