Sin City Review

Majikthise and Yglesias went on about the movie long enough that, when the opportunity arose this afternoon to check it out, I did just that. It was a matinee show at a Cineplex over in Bellevue, and the crowd was a fairly sparse collection of comic book guys. (When they travelled in pairs, I thought of Jack Sprat and his wife.)

The movie, directed by Robert Rodriguez is structured in the same, linked story manner that Tarantino favors. (Tarantino directed one of the segments but I wasn't sure which one). Like "Pulp Fiction" the first and last "Sin City" stories follow a single narrative thread, while characters who appear briefly in either of them take over for the second and third parts. What follows is a lurid, pulpy tale of big city corruption where you separate good and evil characters not so much by their willingness to spill blood as by the way they regard women. (This raises a question about Josh Harnett's character in the vignettes that bookend the movie. I won't say what the question is. Go watch the movie if you want to know.)

That said, the connections between the vignettes was weaker here than they were in "Pulp Fiction". All of Pulp Fiction's episodes revolved around Marcellus Wallace and his crime empire, so the stories tended to be either about what life was like inside Marcellus Wallace's world, or the hope of characters to find a place beyond his influence. While the corrupt Senator played by Powers Boothe had the potential to become such a villain here, he didn't present his credentials in the story until the middle of Story #4. Until then, we heard about him, but we didn't know how much of a role he played in events. And the events of story #3 seemed so distant from #1 and #4 that in retrospect I'm not sure why they were in the same movie. #3 did have its moments, of course. The guy who gets the arrow with the message on it reminded me (probably deliberately) of a similar scene in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". I laughed at that. Indeed, all the stories are fun, but I felt at the end more like I'd taken a tour of this world than experienced a full satisfying narrative in it.

The production design of "Sin City" is one reason to go watch it. Most comic book adaptations fail to incorporate the visual style of the comic books into their designs. "Sin City" is different. Frank Miller's images seem to come to life. The movie looks like a series of animated panels from his books. The credits say Rodriguez shot the movie in Austin but I'll be damned if I saw anything resembling Austin, Texas anywhere on the screen. This movie was filmed on location in Frank Miller's mind's eye, and I was glad to be there for a while.