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signalnoise

Oak Park, IL

Member Since 2004

Followers 129 Following 336

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Monday Apr 11, 2005

Apr 11, 2005
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As hoped for, on Saturday night I finally got to go check out Sin City. I wasnt really sure what to expect on the way in. For starters, Im a huge comic book fan, a huge Sin City fan, and a big Frank Miller fan. I was originally very uncertain about the idea of a Sin City flick, and the first trailers didnt change my mind. With time, and in light of so many good reviews, my curiosity was piqued .

On the whole, I really enjoyed the movie. Ill start with what was good

Mickey Rourke owned the movie. His Marv was pitch perfect; Marv is the kind of aging sociopath with a code of honor that both terrifies you and yet elicits a certain amount of sympathy. Rourke grabbed Millers incredibly pulpy language and made it sound real; further, the way he moved really captured the easy brutishness that you would imagine Marv having. In fact, the first chapter of Sin City (based off what is now titled The Hard Goodbye) was by far the best part of the movie. Really, its the best Sin City yarn it most completely captures the shades of grey, violence, dark humor, gritty urbanism, mystery, and revenge elements that Miller is going for in his noir send-up. Mary is a fascinating character, and Basin (Sin) City itself has a wonderful nowhere/everywhere quality in the first story. The place feels real and the characters elicit a cathartic reaction. Great stuff.

The other perfect, but minor, performance in the film was Brittany Murphy as Shellie. It was a really small part, but Murphy was also able to perfectly wrap her (gloriously sexy) lips around Millers over-the-top words. I mean, has someone threatening to cut off your pecker ever sounded that hot? Murphy absolutely slipped into the wild, 40s-via-the-90s world that Miller has built.

Also of note: Bruce Willis as Hartigan. His work wasnt as great as Rourke or Murphys but Hartian is also a fantastic character. Not as complex or interesting to watch as Marv/Rourke, but his self-deprecating humor and his perspective (aged and careful vs. the animalism of most of the other characters) makes him a nice foil. Additionally, Rutger Hauer was also great fun as Cardinal Roark, probably doing best after Rourke - with the dialogue, managing to make the Cardinal disgusting but strangely lucid and sympathetic.

The other thing worth talking about is the look of the movie. Robert Rodriguez did a great job with the black and white element. It really worked stylistically, and I was generally pleased. It wasnt perfect some of the whites where a bit much (Mihos throwing stars come to mind), resulting in them looking more fake than menacing. Similarly, when people bled that weird white stuff, it looked like something out of Predator, which diminishes the bloods brutality and visceral quality. However, aesthetically, the stark contrast was really well done.

Honestly, I am not sure that Rodriguez is a great director his general aesthetic is more Looney Tunes than artful violence (think Quentin Tarantino, John Woo, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, or Chan-wook Park for directors who make the gory into something artistic, something Rodriguez cannot do. I would suggest that Rodriguez is more of a Michael Bay, but even Bay pulls more soul out of his actions shots than Rodriquez, who is so stylistic its distracting at times.). All that said, I have to respect this movie. I respect his attention to detail in moving from graphic novel to screen. I respect that he shoots fast, and cuts/scores/directs/shoots/producers/sometimes caters his own movies. I respect that he works out of his home in Texas, where he built his own studio and post-production facility. I admire the credit he gives Miller, with the co-director credit. I am also pleased that Rodriguez, following in the vein of Ghost World and American Splendor, is reminding audiences that comics are more than science fiction and superheroes.

But, like any fanboy or poseur academic, there were of course a number of problems

The first problem was that most of the performance werent just much to shout about. Rosario Dawson, Alexis Bledel, and Jessica Alba who are so hot that its dangerous for them to be in a room together were all terrible. Their dialogue sounded fake and stilted; for a second, I thought George Lucas was also a guest director. I think its great that the movie stars three hot Latina actresses. Too bad they all sounded ridiculous.

Perhaps the biggest problem, however, was that the exaggeration and hyperbole did not always work. Millers graphic novels are filled with a tremendous amount of over-the-top action. But that seems different; Millers comic book stylings work for a number of very specific reasons:

1. Miller is working in a different media. To convey the same kind of emotion of grittiness, sometimes bigger sweeps are needed.

2. Millers artistic choices in the comic book make a certain kind of sense. First, he is working in true black and white. The bigger forms are needed to grant clarity. Second, the comics are as much about the composition as the story telling. Miller works on Sin City after doing dense pieces like The Dark Knight Returns. The big, unconventional panels, broad strokes, unique presentation of figures through the use of black and white, and crime noir setting set this work apart from his other work. Thus, as part of an evolution, and as a visual piece divorced from its content, the books are a powerful artistic statement.

3. To a certain degree, Sin City is a pretty juvenile book. The characters, for the most part, are not complex. Millers take on crime comics is really crime comics through a superhero aesthetic (jumps down stairwells, leaping from windows, and getting round via rooftop all speak to this). Miller has even said a trench coat looks a lot like a cape. In that sense, there is a wink, nod, and nudge to Sin City it is so over the top, kinetic, and hyper-pulp/noir, that there is a degree of self-parody to what Miller does. Thus, as a comic book, Sin City works as both tribute and satire of old pulp and crime books. [Just a note: For a true noir/crime book, David Laphams decade-spanning Stray Bullets is probably a better bet.]

These same exaggerations, that work as a way to convey feeling, exhibit a certain artistic skill, or pay homage through humor to other genres in the comic book form just do not work in the movie. As exhibit I offer: Marv getting hit by a car three times and flying around a video game character, Marv jumping down a stairwell like Batman, Dwight leaping off a building and landing like Superman, people being blown around by grenades, and That Yellow Bastard, looking more like a Muppet than a pedophiliac serial killer. These choices, that caused intense gut reactions in print, pulled me out of the movie; after seeing them, all I could think was: That looks SO ridiculous!

In the end, the weaknesses from the movie resulted from Rodriguez being too slavish to the material. What we learn from Sin City is that all those little changes Sam Raimi and Brian Singer made to their respective comic books movies? Those made good sense. [As one reviewer I read put: If Jane Austen can be changed in order to make it work in a movie, Frank Miller can be changed.] His own material caught Rodriguez. Sure, he made a good movie. But not a great one.

In contrast, I offer Oldboy. Oldboy is surprisingly similar to Sin City: it is a gritty urban tale, with revenge elements. Corrupt elites and flawed anti-heroes drive the movie. There are sick plot twists, gore, and gut-wrenching violence. Dark humor abounds throughout the film. There is a quirky love story. Voiceovers are used. Style, in terms of photography and appearance of characters, is tremendously important. The main difference is that Oldboy commits to itself, telling its story in a way that brings out real pathos, instead of telling its story on the level of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Sin City could have been Oldboy. As it stands, Sin City is a good movie. Im glad I saw it, I had a good time, and Ill certainly buy the DVD (for Mickey Rourke alone). But, its not going to be a classic, or a cult favorite. I think, like the first Star Wars prequel, which also opened to much fanboy love, time is going to be hard on this movie. The flaws will become apparent, once the novelty of having a direct, literal translation of a comic book on screen wares off. If Rodriguez had taken the best of the Sin City tales The Hard Goodbye and spun a 100 minute, hardcore, slow paced, dark, and truly noir film starring Rourke I would say wed could have had a movie that was not just fun, but was also great. Im very pleased with what we got, dont get me wrong on that, but Im more intrigued by what was possible.
VIEW 12 of 12 COMMENTS
akirali:
I totally am a fan of auteurs. Espectially very stylistic ones. RR, QT, George Romero, David Fincher, Kevin Smith, Spike Lee etc all top my favorite director list because they make the films they want to make, and let studios deal with the fallout of making it "popular"

(p.s. in my mind, before the Kill Bills, QT's best flick was Jackie Brown )
Apr 12, 2005
akirali:
Oh don't get me wrong, I can totally appreciate a solid storyteller. A well told tale, is a well told tale. And sometimes, the less "artistic trappings" around it, the better. But the majority of my faves are auteurs.
Apr 12, 2005

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