Sin City
Starring: Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Elijah Wood, Bruce Willis, 
Benicio Del Toro, Josh Hartnett, Mickey Rourke and more.
Directed By: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino 
Rated: R
Runtime: 126 min
Opens: Friday April 1st

Frank Miller fans you can finally hold your heads high. Of course, knowing that
the Sin City, or for that matter any of his, graphic novels existed was reason
enough to before. But as we've all seen, Miller's previous attempts to break
into Hollywood were, in short, pathetic. Not so with Sin City and I imagine 
that aside from a story and characters that could be powerful even if they 
were directed by a team of semi-trained monkeys... the assistance of Robert
Rodriguez was no small help (look past Spy Kids and see Once Upon a Time in 
Mexico). 

I can't think of a single movie that had a single scene that made me want to 
stand up and applaud. This one did it to me at least three times.  Sin City is
really three stories taken directly from the Graphic Novels: That Yellow 
Bastard, The Hard Goodbye and The Big Fat Kill each with it's own cast and 
"hero's", of course the hero's in Sin City are just as bad as the bad guys, 
and In many cases much, much worse. For example, during a portion of The Hard 
Goodbye my new all time favorite hero Marv (played with panache by Mickey 
Rourke of all people) "hacks his way to the truth" literally. Looking for the 
man who killed a hooker named Goldie, his friend, who he had just met, just 
because she was kind to him. When he, eventually, finds the man responsible he
tells him "You can go ahead and scream now" I think that was good advice.

The "Yellow Bastard" storyline involves John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) as an 
(unlikely) 64 year old cop whoÕs about to retire whoÕs life goes to shit after
he saves young Nancy from the clutches of Junior the son of a powerful senator.
Hatrigan takes about 600 shots to the back, but still manages to blow the 
assailants balls off. 

Clive Owen plays Dwight in ÒThe Big Fat KillÓ storyline. This is possibly the
least interesting but best played storyline, and it certainly has some of the
best lines "Don't ever give an Irishmen a reason to seek revenge". Dwight is
a Lancelot, always coming to rescue damsels in distress. Sometimes they need
his assistance like Shelly (Brittany Murphy) a waitress in a local exotic club
and other times they don't like the ladies of Old Town. When Jack Rafferty, a
dirty cop (played by Benicio Del Toro) gets a little too frisky with one of 
the girls in Old Town, the fun begins. Here is the only bad casting job in the
film, Del Toro's talents are wasted in this role, I suspect that Rafferty will
shine in the directors cut.

The visual experience makes this a one of a kind. Shot entirely in front of a 
green screen and shown in black and white (with some color added here and there
for effect) it's not as if the pages came to life, but more like the audience 
has been sucked into the books. It's a tribute to the actors that makes this
style pay off, a sloppy or half hearted performance might knock the audience 
out of the experience and loose them entirely. 

The Rodriguez/Tarantino team up really shines. The stylized violence is 
non-stop graphic but- tasteful? When you realize that after a while you're 
essentially just pounding wet skull fragments into the ground, you're not too
disturbed since you can just say to yourself "It's just a comic book...Õ" and
go back to your Skittles. Tarantino works his magic on the script which leaves
the storylines twisted around each other. But unlike Pulp Fiction, where the
stories all join up to form a cohesive whole, these more or less politely 
brush by each other on the way to their own explosive ends. 

Dave can be reached at dkerr@detroitbuzz.com