Sin City

This is probably one of the smoothest, most vivid and most captivating transfer of one form of media into another. Frank Miller’s Sin City is a graphic novel describing crime noir elements of a city, and Robert Rodriguez (Dir. Spy Kids) has transformed it into a stunning and beautiful film, with the assistance of guest director Quentin Tarantino (Dir. Kill Bill). The mood is dark, and the characters are all harrowing.

This movie brings along the Tarantinian hallmark of slanted moral rules. The ethical background of this scenario is very telling, as is the formula, which like Pulp Fiction, features a story of some length divided into two parts with the other two stories taking place chronologically afterwards, but sequentially placed in the middle, as well as short introductory scene which is incorporated into the conclusion.

There are three specific stories and all revolve and relate to a Bar where a girl named Nancy (Jessica Alba, Fantastic Four) strips and another girl is the waitress. The first story follows a straight cop (Bruce Willis, The 6^th Sense) and his pursuit of a horrible pervert and rapist who also happens to be the son of a senator. He saves Nancy as a little girl, and he finds her when she has grown up, and well, there’s a lot to the story. 

The Second story of Marv (Mickey Rourke), and bruising berzerker who sleeps with a hooker named Goldie and awakes to find her dead, and himself framed for the murder. He traces the deed all the way to the pinnacle of power in sin city. The third story is about a murderer (Clive Owen, Closer) who sets out to stop a dangerous psychopath  (Benicio Del Toro, The Usual Suspects) before her hurts the whores of old town. All three stories are over the top in terms of ultraviolence and ultra-realism, and fall far into the absurd. The themes of decency, moral uprightness, and doing the right thing, a noble death are crammed in between some very depressing and disturbing subject matter. A 2, and great viewing if you’ve seen Pulp Fiction.