Sin City

Review by Clint Morris

If you like sour cream on your pizza, diet coke with lemon, have been bungy-jumping off the highest gorge in New Zealand or just have to try whatever new flavour choc-top is out at the cinema this month… chances are you're a sucker for anything different.

It's you then, who will be best served by the very novel - as normal as cheese-flavoured soda - Sin City.

Based on the cult graphic novel series by famed illustrator Frank Miller, the somewhat sexy, slightly edgy, mostly funky Sin City is a black-and-white piece that tells of urban crime, corruption and hopelessness in squalid Basin City.

Like, say, Pulp Fiction, it's singular stories interweave, in turn forming an all-round picture of the nastiness of the cartoonish-world.

Unlike the latter film though, this film relies heavily on narrative rather than character converse. Think '50s film-noir meets Pulp by way of the dark-tinted The Crow (1994) and you get a whiff of the idea.

Bruce Willis is Hartigan, an ex-cop with a bad ticker, who's out to protect a stripper (Alba) from a freakish molester (Stahl). Dwight (Clive Owen) is an all-round hero who smooths things out between the cops and the hookers when hard nosed, corrupt cop Jackie Boy, played by Benicio del Toro, ends up dead, and whopping man-thing Marv, played by an almost unrecognisable Mickey Rourke, is out to catch the goons who popped his beloved Goldie.

Each and every performer in the film - and it's crammed with more familiar faces than the MTV Movie Awards red carpet show - is at the top of their game, despite some only getting a couple of minutes of screen time (look also for Carla 'sizzle, sizzle' Gugino, Alexis Bledel, Powers Boothe, Rosario Dawson, Michael Madsen, Brittany Murphy, Josh Hartnett and Michael Clarke Duncan - to name but a few).

Rourke, in particular, is a knockout as the oversized Marv. The guy hasn't been this good in years - probably because no one has seen fit to cast him in such a snug part; and shoot me silly if it doesn't start earning him a few more gigs. In addition, the role of the burnt-out, distraught hero cop, Hartigan, was a role Willis was born to play.

Even if you don't get immersed in its stories - and there's no real reason why you won't, unless you have to turn away because of the violence - Sin City is still a dazzling, highly admirable picture.

Faithful as ever to the Miller books (it's based on a mixture of three of his novels), it's a black-and-white comic super sized for the big-screen. With its sporadic splash of colour and green-screen only backdrops, it looks sweeter than honey chicken.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow did essentially the same thing, you say? True. But while that looked grand, it's story was as boring as batshit. The staggeringly good production values are only a plus to the already beefy storylines on show here. They go hand-in-hand.

Even with films like Spy Kids 3-D, Robert Rodriguez has shown that he's got a real knack for turning on the razzle-dazzle. This, though, is his finest technical achievement. In another filmmaker's hands, it's hard to imagine how Sin City could've worked out.

Rodriguez - who credits illustrator Frank Miller as his co-director - not only knows how to tell a good story - or three - but can most certainly cook up a feast for the peepers. Sin City is well worth spending a couple of hours at.

4 out of 5

Sin City
Australian release: Thursday the 14th of July, 2005
Cast: Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson, Benicio del Toro, Michael Clarke Duncan, Nick Stahl, Alexis Bledel, Powers Boothe, Michael Madsen, Brittany Murphy, Josh Hartnett, Rutger Hauer, Elijah Wood, Jaime King, Devon Aoki, Marley Shelton.
Directors: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, Quentin Tarantino.
Website: Click here.

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