Movie Monday - Sin City

The new Sin City film, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is being released this week, so I thought we'd look back at the original film from what seems so very long ago.



Director: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, Quentin Tarantino

Writer: Frank Miller

Starring: Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, Devon Aoki, Rosario Dawson, Alexis Bledel, Benicio del Toro, Michael Clarke Duncan, Rutger Hauer, Mickey Rourke, Michael Madsen, Elijah Wood, Nick Stahl, Powers Boothe, Brittany Murphy, Jaime King

Release: 2005

Basin City – a wretched hive of scum and villainy, known to those that live there simply as Sin City. A place where everyone is on the take and only looking out for themselves. The darkness in every person is free to come out from the shadows. Only a few good souls exist, and even they are tarnished by the grim they must deal with daily. Three intersecting stories follow a variety of characters faced with impossible choices, up against the insurmountable odds arrayed against them, from mafia bosses, corrupt cops and politicians, as well as their own demons that haunt their every waking moment.

THE SQUEE

• Rodriguez created an amazing adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novels – visually, it's completely accurate. Unlike Watchmen, this isn't just through re-creating the panels with actors, but capturing the same style as the comic. Using the stark contrasts of black and white (with occasional colours thrown in), Rodriguez has made an amazing film that captures the pulp noir atmosphere that made the books so popular.
• Ultraviolence does give the action movie lover in me a thrill, and the film delivers a LOT of that.
• Deadly little Miho. Devon Aoki is simply fantastic. Actually, the whole cast is outstanding; Elijah Wood delivers one of his creepiest roles ever, Bruce Willis was perfectly cast as the reluctant hero cop and Mickey Rourke's Marv dominates the movie.

THE SUCK

• That actually brings up one of the sucks of the film. Save one character, all the female characters in the film are either hookers, strippers or a combination of the two. While this is true of the comics, it's not particularly comfortable there either. It somewhat fits the pulp feel of the stories, drawing on the old tropes of the femme fatale and the fallen woman that tempts the gumshoe hero, but it might have been nice to buck that trend and have a female character that wasn't primarily defined by her connection with the male desire for her or how her pain affects him.

The three stories that appear in Sin City are available in these volumes.

Sin City 1: The Hard Goodbye – 9781593072933 - $34.99 – 280 pages

Sin City 3: The Big Fat Kill – 9781593072957 - $34.99 – 184 pages

Sin City 4: That Yellow Bastard – 9781593072964 - $34.99 – 240 Pages