Sin City (2005)
Sin City: Film noir. Starring Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Benicio Del
Toro, Jessica Alba and Brittany Murphy. Directed by Frank Miller and Robert
Rodriguez. (R. 125 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)
“Sin City” is a film noir about a crime-filled city and the people who
inhabit it, but it’s also a movie unlike any other. The film uses a
combination of live action, performed by real actors, and computer graphics to
transform Frank Miller’s graphic novels into moving pictures. To remember “Sin
City” hours later is to remember from a different part of the brain that
remembers conventional movies. It’s to remember a comic book come to life.
Just technically speaking, it’s a remarkable achievement. Robert
Rodriguez and Miller (who shared directing duties) set out to do something
different and have succeeded in creating a complete other world that’s
seamless and beautiful. They’ve not only mastered the technology but have used
it with artistry. Most frames in “Sin City” are in black and white, with
splashes of vibrant color — the red of a woman’s lipstick, the sickly
yellow of a eunuch’s complexion. Sometimes a woman is entirely in color, and
the man is in black and white. In one shot, a woman takes two steps toward the
camera and turns from color to black and white as if stepping into shadows.
All these moments have a psychological reverberation — they say something,
paint a mood or instill a feeling.
The performances are in keeping with the visuals, big but controlled.
They match the heightened world of the comic book, without spoofing it or
commenting on it. For Mickey Rourke, “Sin City” is practically a homecoming.
Here’s an actor who has seemed a bit strange in any cinematic setting for at
least 10 years. But in this comic book context of outsized villains and heroes,
everything grand-scale and skewed about Rourke as a screen presence becomes a
virtue. It’s not enough to say that Rourke is good in “Sin City.” It really
feels like he lives there.
Rourke stars in the longest of the loosely connected stories that make up
the film. Wearing prosthetics that give him an overhanging brow and a jutting
chin, he plays Marv, a big ugly bruiser who brings home a pretty girl named
Goldie (Jaime King) and wakes up in the morning to find out that she’s been
killed. Realizing he’s about to get framed, he escapes and sets out to find
her killer, pounding, smashing and slaughtering everything that gets in his
way. Rourke is lots of fun — confident and bizarre and with a strange
imperviousness, as though not occupying the same reality as everyone else.
Marv is described at one point as a man out of some earlier, more brutal
century. That’s how Rourke plays him, as an almost completely instinctive man.
“Sin City” also provides an invigorating showcase for Bruce Willis, as an
old cop, Hartigan, who is to retire because of a heart condition. Of course,
his last case turns out to be his biggest, one involving a child murderer
(Nick Stahl) who also happens to be the son of a senator.
“Sin City” could be criticized as old stuff. The noir world it presents
is derivative of 1940s film, and it bears a family resemblance to other
postmodern fantasy noirs, such as “Dark City” and “The Crow.” Like film noir,
it can also be accused of misogyny. Women are slain with abandon — though
so are men — and the one vision of female strength the movie offers is that
of the prostitute. In one segment, a fugitive (Clive Owen) and a thug (Benicio
Del Toro) have a fight that spills over into “Old Town,” a part of the city
ruled by a merry prostitute band. The other female characters are pretty much
victims of men: Brittany Murphy plays a barmaid with a nice raunchy resiliency,
and Jessica Alba, though she has trouble acting the role of a nightclub
dancer, looks great in black-and-white.
Part of me wants to resist “Sin City,” because it’s art based on art
that’s based on art — that is, a movie based on a comic book based on a
film genre — and, like anything three stages removed from inspiration, it
has nothing to say. It’s a style piece, a fever dream about film noir, and
that hardly seems ambitious or important.
Yet if the movie’s aims aren’t lofty, its entertainment value is high and
consistent. Virtually every moment of “Sin City” engages the mind and the eye.
The energy never flags; the story never stalls. It starts in motion, and ends
in motion. To make a movie this entertaining is to accomplish a small miracle.
– Advisory: Nudity, extreme violence, dismemberment, sexual situations.
E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.
