The best crime stories always have a certain kind of dark poetry to them. From Dashiell Hammett to Raymond Chandler to James Ellroy to a hundred 1950s film noirs, tales of evil deeds and rotting societies have been told with verbal grace and dark wit. “Sin City” is a distillation of these tales, an absurdly exaggerated romp through a dark fantasy world of crime, corruption and violence. It is one of the best films of the year so far and one of the most visually distinct and engaging cinema experiences of the decade.
Based on the comic book series by Frank Miller (who is given co-director credit along with Robert Rodriguez, with a small piece from Quentin Tarantino), the film takes place in Basin City and tells a series of interlocking tales concerning cruel, violent anti-heroes. In any other movie, these stories would hardly add up to more than a stack of B-movie rehashes with stilted dialog. But the look of the film brings the twisted plot screaming to life.
Filmed in black and white with color splattered across it like spilled paint, the characters come off drawn in broad strokes, larger-than-life images that fill the screen. Bruce Willis plays a straight-line cop jailed for a crime he did not commit, Clive Owen plays a killer in hiding and Mickey Rourke gives a powerhouse performance as a nearly psychotic street fighter out to avenge a murdered prostitute he hardly knew.
The film’s obvious absurdities become simple shading under the weight of its storytelling power. The characters take an ungodly amount of physical abuse and walk away looking only more hardened. The laws of physics are disregarded with cheerful glee as people crash through windows, leap from cars and land on their feet every time. It doesn’t matter. The film is one giant head rush, the pure definition of suspended disbelief.
The highlight of the film is Rourke’s tale. His character hunts down those who framed him for the death of a woman who showed him kindness before she was murdered. He tears through every scene he’s in, almost literally chewing the scenery apart. Make-up transforms his face to look as if it were carved in stone, covered in layers of scar tissue and fractures. His story ends as almost all of the film’s
stories end: With a cynical form of justice and a ending that even the most bright-eyed optimist would be stretched to call happy.
It could be said that this film has pretty much redeemed Rodriguez for his past failures. His “Spy Kids” movies sunk into drivel and “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” was a horrid piece of crap, its only saving grace a particularly lunatic Johnny Depp performance. But by drawing from such original material, Rodriguez seems to have found some lost muse.
Much of the look of the film comes from its incorporation of the look and feel of the comic books. Everything is in dark noir shadows and seems to take place in a world that has never seen sunlight. Shot against green screens, the film is an almost entirely digital creation. Unlike previous attempts at this particular technique, it actually works here, in part because the unreality of the digital backdrops only strengthens the sense of this being a fantasy world.
This visual look also plays a hand in the violence of the film, which is considerable. But with its glaring colors and intended cartoonishness, nothing in the film is too hard to swallow. What remains is pure visceral filmmaking, and one intense film-going experience.

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