It Would be Sinful to miss Sin City

Hands down, Sin City is the BEST movie of the year. I can't possibly imagine a better, more interesting, more engaging, more exciting, more satisfying, more enjoyable movie-going experience than this. So unless the producers of Sideways and Duets team up, Sin-City is the bomb. In the good way, I swear.

This is Robert Rodriguez's master work, his equal to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, the final companion piece along with Roger Avary's The Rules of Attraction. These three films are the trifecta of great filmmaking, each leaving their own mark it their own powerful, destructive and original way.

Much will be made of Rodriguez's decision to hire Frank Miller (the originator of the Sin City graphic novels) as co-director, but you can see Rodriguez's greasy fingerprints all over this movie. His obsession with three still stands: three overlapping storylines that traverse time and space, overlapping constantly, rewarding the observant; there's a plethora of bars, it seems that every story hinges on the bar as a place of refuge and the source of impetus for character action. Another Rodriguez constant is the story of hard men trying and failing to save soft women, women who are much harder than they appear to be as we learn very, very quickly.

Sin City, like the graphic novels themselves, is divided into three parts. The Big Fat Kill, The Yellow Bastard, and the original Sin City. The blended and mixed, chopped and pureed, storylines may be intimidating to the viewer who doesn't reader comics (shame on you, some of the most original literature now belongs to the graphic novel, they are simply, novels with pictures, like in the days of yore) but don't give up because Sin City is such a visual treat that merely watching is reward enough. Sin City is the first living, breathing, pulsating comic film. Whereas Spiderman 2 was a comic book movie, Sin City follows the conventions of a comic-book given living form. The result is every comic lover's fantasy.

Rodriguez uses block framing, stark black and white visuals, combined with flashes of bloody color punctuate the story, lending the austere palate a new depth of feeling and passion. And in the end this is a movie about passion. It's about love and hate and revenge and justice and punishment, but mostly it's about passion.

There's Marv (Mickey Rourke, doing his best work in years, he was tailor made for this role) the violent ex-con who avenges Goldy, the prostitute with the proverbial heart of gold and ends up dying for it. But not before a blood-bath of Kill Bill proportions. There's Hartigan (Bruce Willis), the only honest cop in a city of scum, who saves a little girl and ends up rotting in hell for it. Then there's Dwight, the ex-con with a new face (Clive Owen), who defends a woman's honor and somehow ends up chasing around the decapitated head of Jacky Boy (Benicio Del Toro) to prevent a gangland-slash-police war with the prostitutes of Sin City who police and protect their own through much gun and swordplay. Then there's Hartigan again, still protecting that little girl who grew up into Jessica Alba, who saves his life and ends his own all in the struggle to redeem her once and for all, and maybe, just maybe, redeem himself in the process.

Sin City is as challenging as it is rewarding, as pugnacious as it is vile, but it's so much more than that. Sin City presents a new style of filmmaking, the auteur as graphic artist, the director as composer. Between this and Sky Captain, the only limits placed on storytelling are now self-imposed. To recap, Sin City best movie so far this year, and the chances of it not being on my top ten list, miniscule.
Jess Nakaska is an aspiring screenwriter always on the lookout for the next great script idea. He'll let you know if he finds it. Feel free to contact him at jessnakaska@hotmail.com.