Even during a decade where comic book movies rose to prominence like never before, Sin City still felt like a lead pipe to the back of the head. While we looked to the skies and watched while beloved characters like the X-Men and Spider-Man were making their long awaited, big screen debuts, Robert Rodriguez was looking down and immersing himself in the bile and the filth of Basin City.
Frank Miller’s Sin City, a stupendously hard-nosed slice of exaggerated neo-noir, first made its debut in 1991 in the pages of Dark Horse Presents Fifth Anniversary Special and from that point on, the subsequent, intertwined tales of the denizens of the titular city became that of cult legend. While the stories were the equivelent of Raymond Chandler injected with animal stimulant, the art work was harsh, monochromatic scrawls that rendered its characters as brutal caricatures, devoid of pity and only allowed the briefest splash of colour.
Only a madman would dare attempt to adapt such a vicious masterpiece for the screen – only Robert Rodriguez fit the bill.
Welcome to Sin City, a corrupt cesspool of crooks and whores of every distinction where endless stories of murder and violence play out on a canvas of filth streaked alleyways and booze soaked bars. As we wind our way into the underbelly of a urban hellscape that even Batman would hasten take a night off from, we follow the misadventures of a trio of gruff, thugs who carry tarnished hearts of gold lodged deep in their burly frames.
One such story concerns the aged form of Detective John Hartigan who is celebrating his last day on the force by racing to tie up some loose ends in the form of the psychotic child murderer, Junior Roark, who has been avoiding justice thanks to being the son of a corrupt senator. Despite a bum Tucker and a crooked partner, Hartigan manages to rescue eleven year old Nancy Callahan from Junior’s clutches by obliterating one of his hand and burying a slug into his genitals. However, after being framed for Junior’s crimes, Hartigan endures eight years of imprisonment and beatings until he confesses, but upon his release, he finds he’s been manipulated into locating a hidden Nancy for a strange yellow-skinned bastard who has been following the grizzled cop since he hit the streets.
Elsewhere we meet Marv, a brick shithouse of a neanderthal who somehow has managed to spend the night with the beautiful Goldie. But when the lantern jawed awakes the next day to find that Goldie has been murdered, he embarks on a brutal rampage for justice that takes in corrupt cardinals, twin sisters and an utterly terrifying cannibal by the name of Kevin.
Finally, we get trapped within a nightmarish farce with Dwight, a dashing do-gooder in sneakers who’s recently had a facelift after a previous, twisted adventure. Tracking Jackie Boy – a delusional thug with a penchant for harming women – into the whore-owned Old Town, matters finally spill out of control with fatal circumstances. However, once Jackie’s identity is fully revealed, the repercussions could prove to be disastrous for every gun-toting prostitute in the area…
Sin City is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most comic accurate adaptation of a comic book the world had ever seen – and most likely ever will. Oh sure, filmmakers had strained to copy the occasional image wholesale – Spider-Man 2’s homage to the cover of the web slinger’s 50th issue in particular is a doozy – but Rodriguez set himself something of an imposing task. Instead of using Miller’s evocative artwork as a launching point, he decreed that the production use the cinematic imagery as virtual storyboards in an attempt to perfectly recreate the book’s unique look. The result was something that truly hadn’t been seen before as the brutal underworld was literally ripped from the page and painstakingly recreated on the screen to stunning effect.
However, movies have looked pretty before and movies have looked pretty since and while Rodriguez’s devotion to the source material was legitimately groundbreaking, what really makes Sin City sing is the equal amounts of devotion shown by its expansive cast.
Everybody – and I do mean everybody – has been cast to utter perfection and on top of that, everyone blatantly understands the assignment. Nothing else screams this more that the fact that the casting of the hulking fan favorite, Marv, surely should have been next to impossible – thankfully Rodriguez wall fully aware that the enigma known as Mickey Rourke still walked the earth and promptly signed him up. To say that the actor played the role perfectly is an understatement that verges on grave injustice; simply put, Rourke is Marv and embodies the endearing thug in a way that immediately slots him in with other such legendary, comic book castings as Ron Pearlman as Hellboy and J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson. Branching out from this, locking everybody else in place must have been a fucking cinch as anyone who had ever leafed through an issue of Sin City before suddenly saw the rogue’s gallery of creeps, crooks and warrior women vibrantly spring to life. Bruce Willis gave Hartigan that aging hero feel par excellence; Clive Owen delivered Dwight’s anti-hero swagger as he dives headlong into a situation he can’t control; Benicio Del Toro – caked with prosthetics that weirdly make him look like a mix between a bloated Antonio Banderas and Clancy Brown – goes full sleezebag as Jackie Boy; Rosario Dawson embraces her inner Valkyrie as Gail; Elijah Wood unnerves as the mute, flesh eating Kevin – and so on. In fact, among the expansive cast that further includes Josh Hartnett, Jessica Alba, Alexis Biedel, Jaime King, Nick Stahl, Carla Gugino, Michael Clarke Duncan, Rutger Hauer, Brittany Murphy, Powers Booth and Michael Madsen, no one hits a bum note. Christ, they even got deadly little Miho right.
As a result, Sin City may be the most accomplished movie of Robert Rodriguez’s career as he weaves Miller’s ridiculously hard boiled dialogue (“I take his weapons away… both of ’em.”) with near perfect imagery.
While those who find Miller’s exaggerated, hyperbolic brand of storytelling a little on the abrasive side might find the blunt architypes (women are either whores or victims) and casual cruelty of Sin City either hard going, or tough to take seriously (not sure they needed to adapt the swastika-shaped throwing stars), Sin City is arguably the Pulp Fiction of comic book movies thanks to its multiple storylines, starry cast and complete and utter disregard for human like.
While it could be argued that the pairing of Rodriguez and Miller opened the doors to more non-superhero graphic novels finding their way to cinema screens with titles like 300, 30 Days Of Night, Watchmen and The Spirit all following in the years since.
“Walk down the right back alley in Sin City, and you can find anything.” rumbles Marv at one point, well, what we’ve found among the sleaze and dystopia is a genuine masterpiece and a true original to boot.
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