With Sin City, director Robert Rodriguez attempts to revolutionize both film noir and comic book adaptations by doing something almost unheard of in mainstream cinema: not simply adapting but meticulously translating Frank Miller’s cult graphic novels for the screen. Working with three of Miller’s stories, Rodriguez, recently devoted to such family-friendly fare as the Spy Kids trilogy and this year’s The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl, meant to replicate almost every panel of the novels, even taking dialogue straight from characters’ speech bubbles; this is literally a translation of the comic, bringing it to life. Such a concept could have gone either horribly wrong or with effortless, novel brilliance. Fortunately, Sin City veers slightly towards the latter.
The film is concurrently a translation to screen and a loving tribute to its source; not in a while has a Hollywood picture been so overtly, admirably, rabidly consumed and in love with the original material it was based on (Rodriguez even credits Miller as codirector, quitting the Directors Guild of America when they refused to give him the title). Sin City is probably the most faithful comic book movie ever to be projected onto a screen, and this is both its greatest success and most compunctious failure. Rodriguez is self-assured and works so organically with such difficult source material: vignettes on cops, strippers, corrupt politicians, hookers, cannibals and the criminal underbelly of a bleak, disgusting metropolis with questionable morals draw and consequently erase the thin line between the good guys and the villains. Trying to keep the graphic novel’s sexual and violent explicitness intact without verging on the gratuitous, Rodriguez is able to successfully meld ’50s noir with the digital technology he so fanatically champions to create a sum of old-school yet revolutionary influences.
The astounding visual power of Sin City’s black-and-white-with-intermittent-smidgens-of-color stylishness is utterly intoxicating that we are sometimes lured into forgetting its rather blatant imperfections. Rodriguez’s screenplay at times sacrifices a more engaging, cinematically apt and practical plot for literary faithfulness, as it seems that he himself gets inebriated with his own mesmerizing visual style that the film often delves into the superficial. The film’s bleakest elements usually fail to work and cohere; it needs to lighten up and exude more of the dark deadpan humor that’s sporadically scattered throughout. What’s being sinful without having fun?
At this note, thank God for Quentin Tarantino, who good friend Rodriguez asked to helm a four-minute conversation sequence between Clive Owen’s Dwight and Benicio del Toro’s Jackie Boy – doing what else, but driving (alas, no mention of McDonald’s around the world).
Nevertheless, Rodriguez weaves the storylines with an adept sense of pace and audience awareness, thus the dazzling cast gleams even brighter. Mickey Rourke is oddly, almost crushingly endearing as the vengeful Marv, an ugly tough guy with a heart of gold, and Bruce Willis is surprisingly poignant, his vignette with a sexy Jessica Alba the most emotionally involving of all three. It’s just too bad that Sin City has to stoop to unabashed portrayals of misogynism, helpless hookers and all.
Bottom Line: One of the most daring and stylish mainstream pictures of the year, Sin City is a disgusting, seductive metropolis of visual fetish that’s fascinating to explore, though I’d never dream living in it.
Grade: A-
• Watch Sin City.
TV
• Watch America’s Next Top Model, every Monday at 7:30 p.m. on Studio 23. With only a couple more episodes left, the third cycle of reality TV’s juiciest, most addictive guilty pleasure is winding down, not to mention its off-the-charts CPM (catfights per minute).