The green screen is filled with plenty of Noir.
Evoking the personality of film noir but keeping the identity of the graphic novel, director Robert Rodriguez mentored by Frank Miller bring film geeks a sexy and violent underworld that respects the imaginative world that it comes from. Unlike most comic books to big screen adaptations, this lifts not only the characters and the narrative from Miller’s works, but manages to bring the pages of the comic book into the film as well. Sin City remains an exercise in heavy styling – the recipe is part 40’s pulp novel, part Phillip Marlowe on crack and think of not having to think.
After his tinkering around in 3D and his Spy Kids franchise and Mexican gang-fights trilogy of films, Rodriguez continues in his pattern of 3’s – setting up three tales based on the graphic noels The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill, and That Yellow Bastard. Male protagonists are accompanied by tough female dames – the character of Marv played by Mickey Rourke is a good representative of the prototypical citizen in a Miller universe – he doesn’t mince words, he seeks shelter with a lady friend and rotates between a smoking gun or smoking a cigarette. The 12 or so main characters that flash upon the screen each have their vice – short skirts or killing people are part of the same playbook. Though the film is rated-R, it is very clear who’ll love the tales the most – filled with guns, blood-splattered walls, sexy sirens and tough guys who’ve taken more than one punch to the stomach, fanboys from all corners will love this one.
Almost carrying a cartoon bubble trait – the bits of dialogue is fit for the kinds of viewers who sit far up in the theatre gallery – its geekness quality blends well with the popping eye-candy. Though the look of the film is great with the stylized film noir palette of colors with the occasional bright reds look sublime – problem is much like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow , the pioneering green screen work gets severely boring after about the 15 minute mark. Rodriguez offers a well-developed universe with an under developed storyline where even the overuse of narration becomes a little too self-explanatory for its own good. The film retains a juvenile quality that makes the full ride a long one.
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Aside from what a maxed-credit card seven-thousand dollar project can do for a career, Sin City is the first Rodriguez film that is worth mentioning, not because of a guest directorial presence from Quentin Tarantino or the cast of personalities from established actors, but because the filmmaker pushed the idea of the comic book movie into a new realm and he did it in a manner that says F-You to the industry. Technical merits aside, while the film comes across as the connotation of cool it is best suited for an audience that still haven’t gotten around to more heady material. Try on Dick Tracy for size.
