Sin City
Sin City is a 2005 Neo Noir Film directed by Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and Frank Miller and is an adaption of the series of graphic novels written and illustrated by Miller. The Sin City comic books are some of my favorites and are one of the biggest influences on my own comic books. If you have ever read my comics, you can tell I took a lot from Miller’s stories in regards to how they are told, how the characters are handled and especially in regards to art work. The series is held in high regard in comic circles and was one of the hottest properties to be adapted into a film when it was in its heyday. However, Frank Miller was heavily against Sin City, or any of his work for that matter, being adapted into films. This was due in large part to his poor experience working as a writer on Robocop 2. However, Rodriguez was hellbent on adapting the film. So he got together a team and produced an adaptation of one of the short stories in Sin City. He then presented this to Miller, who was so impressed by it that he ended up working on the film full time. The result was a masterpiece of filmmaking and in my opinion, the best comic book adaptation of all time…..or at least in regards to live action movies.
For those of you who don’t know, Sin City is a neo noir anthology series that follows the adventures of various individuals living in the fictional Basin City. Or as the locals call it: Sin City. Why? Because Basin City is a cesspool of crime and villainy. The town is full of career criminals, organized crime, serial killers, mass murders, racist and any other form of vile human being. Even the authorities in Basin City are little more than another criminal faction as only a handful of law enforcement officials aren’t dirty. The film adaption follows the anthology style of the comics by telling four different stories: The Customer is Always Right, The Yellow Bastard, The Hard Goodbye and The Big Fat Kill. Given that the stories are very loosely tied together, I figured the best way to talk about them is to look at them individually.
The film opens with the short story, the Customer is Always Right. The story covers a brief interaction between a mysterious hitman and a woman he’s been hired to kill. This was the proof of concept that Rodriguez produced in order to get Miller onboard and watching it again, you can see why he loved it so much. Part of what makes Sin City such a good adaptation is that Rodriguez used the comic book itself as a storyboard and the dialogue as a script. He also tried really hard to match the look of the comic too. The whole movie is shot in black and white with small splashes of color to represent a greater meaning. This can be seen in The Customer is Always Right. The woman’s dress is red, which usually means that the character is powerful in the world of Sin City. And when the Hitman lights a cigarette for her, the lighter causes her eyes to turn green for a minute. Green typically represents greed which indicates that despite the apparent power the woman has, she still desires more. Maybe this is why the Hitman was hired to kill the woman but we never learn if that’s the case. This is a great intro to the movie and it comes full circle as well when the Hitman appears again at the very end of the movie.
The first story is The Yellow Bastard, which tells the story of a cop named Hartigan as he attempts to protect a woman named Nancy from the titular Yellow Bastard. I’ll be honest guys, I’ve never been fond of The Yellow Bastard. Though it is interesting in that it shows the hardships of doing the right thing in a world where everyone around you is evil, that comes off as a little depressing to a guy like me. It also gets a little too uncomfortable, even for me. It’s very weird watching Bruce Willis make out with Jessica Alba, who is playing a character who is barely above the age of consent and I don’t like the ultimate fate of the Yellow Bastard. I always have to look away at that part despite the fact that he deserved it. I should also note that The Yellow Bastard is the only story in the movie to be broken up into two parts. I didn’t understand this at first but it made sense when I thought about it in the context of the story. The events of the Yellow Bastard take place over the course of several years, so the gap in the story makes sense. Overall, it’s a good adaptation, the problem is just in the source material.
The highlight of the movie for me is The Hard Goodbye, which follows a character named Marv as he goes on a rampage through Sin City in search of the killer of his lady love. Now that’s a VERY typical setup for a noir story so why do I love it so much? One word: Marv. Oh my god, Marv is such a badass character. Unlike the typical gumshoe that tends to star in noir stories, Marv is a f***ing looser. He is unemployed, lives with his mom and is so ugly that he can’t get a woman, even if he pays for it. However, Marv is a legend in Sin City. There isn’t a single person in town tougher than Marv and he’s one of the few people in the city who isn’t a complete piece of s***. He operates on a strong moral code and always does his best to do the right thing, which is a bit of a problem because Marv suffers from a vague halcingentic condition and is…..kind of dumb. He even admits that his only method of tracking down his love’s killer is finding someone who knows more than him and “squeezing” them until they tell him something he doesn’t know. This actually leads to a lot of great action scenes which are admittedly the film’s weak point. Though none of them are bad, they come off as a little too cartoonish. It’s an example of Rodrigez sticking too closely to the comic and honestly makes me wish they had done an animated movie…...oh man wouldn’t that be something. Anyway, The Hard Goodbye is the highlight of the movie and is worth watching the film for alone.
And lastly we have The Big Fat Kill. This story follows a local P.I. named Dwight as he tries to prevent a war between the whores of Old Town, the Mob and Cops when the Whores accidently kill a famous cop. This story is okay. It’s better than The Yellow Bastard but not as good as The Hard Goodbye. It does serve as good worldbuilding for Sin City as we see how the power is balanced in the city. Dwight is also a pretty cool character though there are certain things about his character that are never explained, like his “New Face”. It’s interesting to note that the second film features a story explaining Dwight’s new face. I wonder why they didn’t adapt that story first. I guess this one flowed better in conjunction with the other stories. Now that’s not to say that any of these stories connect but there are recurring elements. In the Yellow Bastard, Hartigan has a run-in with the Rourke Family, who also come into conflict with Marv in the Hard Goodbye. Marv’s love is also a woman named Goldie who is a whore from Old Town and her associates make up the secondary characters in The Big Fat Kill. So even though the narratives are disjointed, they do at least flow into one another.
So all the stories are great and the way the film was crafted is brilliant. The other thing that really brings the comics to life is the cast, which is packed with A-Listers. You got Bruce Willis as Hartigan, Jessica Alba as Nancy and Mickey Rourke as Marv. That last one is an incredible performance. Whenever I read a Sin City comic with Marv, this is how I pictured he’d sound. If you ask me, he is Marv. One of the best casting choices ever. The whole film is full of great talents and I love how in the opening credits, they have the names of the actors over the characters as they are represented from the comics. It’s one of the greatest cast in any film ever.
