Sin City (2005)

Director - Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, Quentin Tarantino

Genre: Action/Crime

A film noir based on Frank Miller's graphic novel series by the same name.

 

After the third RoboCop film bombed at the box office, Miller was adamant about letting anyone direct a movie based on his stories without his assistance, fearing a similar result.

So, Rodriguez eager to direct it filmed a test scene which later became the opening scene as well. He even gave credit to other directors for direction.

Movie shows three of Miller's Sin City adaptations:

• The Hard Goodbye: About an ugly brute(Mickey Rourke) out to avenge death of his one night stand love.
• The Big Fat Kill: Which focuses on a street war and treaty between a group of prostitutes and police.
• That Yellow Bastard: Shows Bruce Willis as an aging police officer who protects a young woman Nancy Callaghan from a pedophile,serial killer(Nick Stahl) and later saves adult Nancy(Alba)from Yellow Bastard.

Cinematography is classy, unique, and retains the dark look of the original novel. Most of the film is in black and white with highlighted coloring for select objects. Film was digitally treated for heightened contrast so as to more clearly separate blacks and whites. This was done not only to give a more noir look, but also to make it appear more like the original comic.

Sin City is a genius movie with an awesomely huge star cast; a rare combination. The movie stars Bruce Willis, Alexis Bledel, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, Michael Clarke Duncan, Rosario Dawson, Benicio del Toro, Michael Madsen, Nick Stahl, Powers Boothe, Josh Hartnett, Jaime King, Brittany Murphy, Elijah Wood and Rutger Hauer

A strong-point of the film was writer being a director too; therefore, every fictional character can be experienced so intimately by viewers. Especially Marv (Mickey Rourke) as a bit insane but morally sound brute on medication and payroll under drop-dead gorgeous lesbian payroll officer Lucille (Carla Gugino).

Kudos to other directors, Robert Rodriguez, and master Tarantino for getting the hang of the graphic novel so artistically well. Tarantino was "Special Guest Director" for directing the car sequence between Clive Owen and Benicio del Toro.

Bruce Willis has always been one of the top notch kick-ass Hollywood macho man but here Mickey Rourke has toppled him by an inch or two.

Something like never before and yet to be bettered!

8.5/10