Comic books, graphic novels, call them what you will but
Frank Miller’s ‘Sin City’ stories are amongst the most striking and original
examples of the art form. They are visceral, beautiful, sexy and excruciatingly
violent. The news that they were to be adapted into movies was not met with
universal approval by the fan community, but as has been well proven screaming
geeks on the internet wield little influence over movie producers.
“Instead of trying to turn it into a movie, which would be
terrible, let’s try and turn cinema into this book.”
Robert Rodriguez.
Auteurs do not exist in popular cinema but a few people come
close and one such individual is Robert Rodriguez. Rodriguez is the restless director, writer and editor
of the ‘Mariachi’ films and ‘From Dusk ‘Til Dawn’, the movie that made A-list
material of George Clooney, tequila sexy and horror movies profitable business
once more. So when Rodriguez and ‘Sin City’ were mentioned in the same sentence
the movie became a substantially more appealing prospect, and his announcement
that he intended to use the source material as his script and storyboards
resulted in more drool spattered keyboards than the dream I had about Rick
Wakeman having a stroke. Indeed it is a testament to Rodriguez’s artistic
integrity that not only did he endeavour to faithfully translate Miller’s
stories to celluloid, but also insisted on Miller receiving co-director’s
credit, a move which was opposed by The Director’s Guild Of America. In
response Rodriguez resigned from the DGA, a move that would him his next job helming the
adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough’s classic science fiction fantasy ‘Princess
Of Mars’, and duly credited Frank Miller as co-director prompting in 2012 a beautiful 'what-if?' scenario. Rodriguez at the time had said that he intended to give his John Carter movie the look of a moving Frank Frazetta painting.
This wasn’t Miller’s first foray into movies (he penned
the lamentable screenplays for the disappointing Robocops 2 and 3) but 2005 has undoubtedly
brought Miller to the masses with ‘Sin City’ conquering the world and the
return to form of the Caped Crusader, ‘Batman Begins’ being heavily influenced
by Miller’s own dark take on the Dark Knight in his graphic novel ‘Batman: Year
One’. Little wonder then that another of his works is receiving the big budget
Hollywood treatment with Zack Snyder (fresh off his debut success with Dawn Of
The Dead ’04) currently filming ‘300’, based on Miller’s graphic novel of the
same name depicting an episode during the Persian invasion of Greece where 300
Spartans held off a force of over 100,000 Persians at Thermopylae. It remains
to be seen whether his vision will be as flawlessly adapted as was ‘Sin City’. Opinion may be divided on the 'quality' of the adaptation but 300 proved to be an even bigger worldwide hit than Sin City.
“When we started casting this strange things started
happening, people were turning up who looked like my drawings.”
Frank Miller
Rodriguez is proving himself, like his compadre
Tarantino before him, to be a director who can redefine actors’ careers. The sheer
quality and profile of the cast of ‘Sin City’ harkens back to the ensemble disaster
movies of the seventies such as ‘The Towering Inferno’ but issues such as top
billing on the poster are irrelevant with Rodriguez’s artistic vision elevating
the project to a level way above a simple all star vehicle like ‘Ocean’s
Eleven’ and giving A-list stars and fading character actors a new dimension in which to
play.
Bruce Willis has a habit of recreating himself in
groundbreaking movies and his turn as the physically ailing Hartigan, a cop entering
the last hour of his thirty year career, ranks alongside his portrayal of over
the hill boxer Butch Coolidge. Willis’s movie star career forms a perfect arc
beginning with ‘Die hard’ and charting his maturation through ‘Pulp Fiction’
and now ‘Sin City’, all his other movies form the links between these massive
punctuation points.
Phoenix-like is perhaps the most appropriate way to describe
Mickey Rourke’s performance as Marv, a sympathetic monster to rival Karloff’s,
and the best example of acting through latex since Howard Sherman’s Bub in ‘Day
of the Dead’. After a post eighties downturn in his fortunes (see ‘Harley
Davison And The Marlborough Man’) and a brief career as a boxer Rourke has, with
quiet dignity, been re-establishing himself as a character actor with roles in a
number of well received films such as ‘Man On Fire’, ‘Spun’, Rodriguez’s own
‘Once Upon A Time In Mexico’, and as a transvestite convict in ‘The Animal
Factory’. If there had been any lingering doubts that he is not one of the most
charismatic and gifted actors of his generation then Marv has smashed them to a
bloody and bony pulp.
‘Sin City’ is littered with flawless performances by
household names, often in the smallest of roles. Rutger Hauer is onscreen for
only a couple of minutes each but leaves an indelible mark in his role as the
twisted Cardinal Roark. Most remarkable of all is Elijah Wood as ‘Kevin’, in
terms of screen time a small role but significant and memorable as Wood defies
any risk of typecasting after his several years in the public eye as a
Frodo-sexual to beat the snot out of Rourke’s ‘Marv’ and disturb audiences
world-wide as a sociopathic cannibal with the voice of an angel.
Brittany Murphy picks up where she left off in ‘Spun’ and
again proves herself the queen of battered wife chic and Jessica Alba
shows why she’s such hot Hollywood property as well as proving that she’s a really,
really good dancer.
The only disappointing aspect of the casting is that
Leonardo Di Caprio turned down the role of Junior/Yellow Bastard. Nick Stahl
did a creditable job of creating the loathsome character but I for one would
have got a real kick out of seeing Leo play a disfigured and castrated child
molester.
‘Sin City’ the movie concentrates on three of Miller’s stories
"The Hard Goodbye" (Marv,) "The Big Fat Kill" (Dwight and
the hookers) and "That Yellow Bastard" (Hartigan and Nancy), as well
as the short "The Customer is Always Right" which forms the
pre-credit introduction. That sequence was filmed in one day as a test in order
to show Frank Miller the possibilities of what can be achieved by making a 100%
digital movie. By no means the first movie of its kind it is definitely the
first to use the technology to create a living world that services the plot and
the source perfectly, essentially delivering Rodriguez’s vision of converting
our cinema screens into the moving image of Miller’s imagination.
Over the years we’ve
seen many comic book adaptations come and go, some good ones, some colossal
turds and with Hollywood desperately short on originality the comic form is
increasingly ripe for the plunder, ‘A History Of Violence’ being the latest
graphic novel adaptation to hit our cinema screens. Now we know it can be done
right, and we know our tales of excruciating violence, bloody vengeance and hot
chicks with Uzis can have artistic merit AND be mainstream.
‘Sin City’ is the way and with an unrated director’s cut on
DVD released in the US in December and ‘Sin City 2’ coming in 2006 let there be
plenty more light.
2012 update: Sin City 2 never happened and the terrible reception to Miller's solo directorial effort The Spirit has damaged his cache somewhat but Rodriguez has recently stated that shooting may commence in mid-2012...
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