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Sin City So you start with who's who. Marv, Jackie Boy, Hartigan, Dwight, Mickey Rourke, Benicio Del Toro, Bruce Willis, Clive Owen. Rutger Hauer as Roark, Powers Boothe as Rourk, Nick Stahl as Rourk again, and you'd be forgiven for getting confused. Elijah Wood as Himself. Alexis Bledel and Jessica Alba and Rosario Dawson and Brittany Murphy and Jaime King dear god as pistol hot vixens. Michael Madson and Michael Clark Duncan, both tragically stiff. Everyone delivering lines like Shakespeare on a 1940s detective kick, which works kind of, at least until you hear the same voice in every character. Film noir green screen white blood comic book pornography, is the general picture.
The lineup makes it hard to believe the film will come out okay, but the celebrity factor happily has no negative effect on the film. Real fans know better than to put their stock in casting, looking behind the camera at Rodriguez and guest-director Tarantino and saying "duh" or possibly "QED hella rocks". But it's the sort of thing where you get excited because so many people take it on, and disappointed because they can't save the concept. I'm talking theoretically, of course. Sin City is a long, stylized orgasm which works too hard to be anything but awesome. However, coming on the heels of two Frank Miller adaptations (Daredevil and Elektra) and starring simply too many people, you can imagine the concern. And until you see it, you worry the director's meter might still bobbing around Spy Kids 3-D. Things get as bad as they're going to in the first five minutes, in a mood-souring scene starring Josh Hartnett (whose appearance in the film is the second-biggest mistake after releasing it online). From there it's all uphill. Characters lose their penises to bullets and knives, heads get skewered and sawn off, breasts flop in all sizes and you're positively swimming in glorious die-hard redundancy like, "By the time I'm done with him the Hell I send him to will seem like Heaven, after what I've done to him."
The story is a bit rough on summary enthusiasts. All told, it's a revenge flick. Hartigan (Willis) is a cop intent on saving young Nancy from an act of obscenity, a two-part effort spanning eight years. Marv (Rourke)'s plotline focuses on the death of a beautiful hooker named Goldie (King), moving from the gutters of Sin's gang-like prostitute district to the high tower of Cardinal Roark (Hauer) - with a fantastic bloody scene between Marv and an impish, psychotic serial killer that easily wins Best and Most Gruesome Sequence Ever (in black and white, anyway). Owen's Dwight looks out for his girl Shelley (Murphy) by facing off with her one-time boyfriend Jackie Boy (Del Toro), which turns into a city-wide brawl involving cops, Mafia and prostitutes. Oh and lots of guns. There are so many damned characters and mini-events it'd be a crime to give them all away. What's good to know is that each scene is drawn in nauseating detail from Miller's comics-as-storyboards. For those who could care less about accuracy, it's a crime drama and a sexfest that well earns the cash and time you invest. It's Dick Tracy with all the potential realized. If you enjoyed the hammy schlock of Rockstar's Max Payne series or last year's groundbreaking-but-in-a-commercial-way Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, then Sin is absolutely your helmet of blood.
Unfortunately, despite all, it's not quite collectible cinema. In trying so hard to make "a movie that looks like a comic", Sin ends up suffering from the same problems that many digital projects do. Locations are simulated, not built, lacking depth and creating a kind of cheap we-did-this-in-one-studio effect. Actors play off each other with eye-bulging effort, but there's not enough substance surrounding them to make it convincing for us. There are scenes, such as when Nancy (Alba) dances in a crowded bar, where the actors and audience share the same reality, but it doesn't last, especially when shots are framed tightly or stylistically on whoever's speaking. And the speaking, as said above, gets old. Full pages of comic font exposition and same-tone grumbling does not fly on screen. Boil it down and the women are all sultry sluts, the men are all hard shoulders, everyone threatens and sass-talks in the same way with the same cadence. It's not terrible, but it could be better.
The cameos are endless fun. We see so-and-so from Boiler Room and laugh, we see the annoying little girl from Saw and nudge the people next to us. And most of what you see is fresh, if not revolutionary. It's dark times when fresh looks revolutionary just by standing next to everything else. Sin City wins mostly on account of not caring about any of this. It's an absolute idea that attracts big names - and slashes their throats and eats their fingers - and the result is a pretty damn good two hours.
I've drifted off point by now so I'll just say that Alexis Bledel has the sexiest goddamn forehead since Christina Ricci. Would've bought fifty tickets months in advance if they'd shown so in the trailers.
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