Sin City

Review by Richard Lee


Dimension Home Video / 2005 / 124 Minutes / Rated R
Street Date: August 16, 2005

Specifications: 
-DVD-Video
-DVD-9
-Region 1

Aspect Ratio:
-1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen

Audio:
-English 5.1 Dolby Digital
-English 5.1 DTS
-French 5.1

Subtitles:
-English
-Spanish
-None

Main Menu:
-Play Movie
-Scene Selection
-Behind The Scenes
-Set Up
-Sneak Peeks

Based on the graphic comic book series by Frank Miller, “Sin City” is faithfully realized by Miller, Robert (Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn) Rodriquez, and “guest director” Quentin (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill) Tarantino and like “Pulp Fiction”, “Sin City” is presented as a series of vignettes, loosely inter-connected and chronologically out of order. The whole premise of Miller’s stories from this series pays homage to the film noir of the 40’s and 50’s but with an incredibly more intense depiction of violence and female nudity. Such as it is, this movie will definitely not appeal to everyone and is aimed squarely at a male audience. Women’s groups will find plenty to complain about here; every female character in this movie is either a hooker, an exotic dancer, or a barmaid. In fact, the only one that is not, a lesbian parole officer, first appears to us completely naked. 

Bookended by “The Customer Is Always Right” which has Josh Hartnett playing a hitman, the main thrust of the movie is divided into three major stories based on “The Big Fat Kill”, “The Hard Goodbye” and “That Yellow Bastard”. The first and best of the three has Mickey Rourke playing Marv, a street thug who resembles a Cro-Magnon man out to avenge the death of his hooker girlfriend Goldie, played by Jaime King. Rourke is barely recognizable under so much facial prosthetics, he could be playing a character in Dick Tracy. Marv discovers that the killer has connections with the city’s religious authority and decides to make a date with Hell by dispatching the Cardinal himself, played by Rutger Hauer. Kevin, the Cardinal’s killer, is played by Elijah Wood, who effectively distances himself light years away from Frodo Baggins; he is easily the movie’s creepiest character with his mute, never-blinking, sharp-nailed, cannibalistic assassin. The movie’s most memorable performance belongs to Rourke however; the character of Marv is perfectly suited for him, the quintessential anti-hero who, though despicable in his ways, ends up with us rooting for him; proof that Rourke, in the right role, can still be a very charismatic actor.

The next story concerns another anti-hero, Dwight, played by Clive (King Arthur, Closer) Owen who comes to the aid of a sassy barmaid Shellie, played by Brittany Murphy, who suffers abuse from Jackie Boy, Benicio Del Toro, who unknown to them, is a cop. Dwight enlists the help of the prostitutes of Old Town, led by Gail, played by Rosario Dawson and features a memorable performance by Devon Aoki as Miho, the girls’ top assassin, who wields samurai swords right out of “Kill Bill”; indeed, Miho and Go Go Yubari could be teamed up to form one formidable and sexy girl assassin duo. It is in this segment that Quentin Tarantino had a hand in the production directing a scene between Dwight and Jackie Boy inside a car.

The last of the three main stories deals with a tried and true cop nearing the end of his career due to a bad heart. The role of Hartigan seems tailor-made for Bruce Willis who with this role and that of Jeff Talley in “Hostage” is experiencing an acting rejuvenation of sorts after ten years of mediocre non-cop roles. Hartigan is the one true boy scout in Sin City’s police force who dares to expose the Senator’s son, played by Nick (Terminator 3) Stahl, as a serial child molester/killer. In his attempt to save an 11-year old girl from Junior, Hartigan is even shot by his partner, played by Michael Madsen, who fears repercussions from the Senator. But save her he does and thank goodness for that because the girl, Nancy Callahan, grows up to be played by Jessica Alba. Hartigan also seriously maims Junior in the process and after years of medical treatments, Junior returns to torment Hartigan and Nancy as the character in the title, “That Yellow Bastard”. 

Rodriguez, Miller, and Tarantino have combined their testosterone-laden storytelling skills and made, in my opinion, the Pulp Fiction of this decade. But I give warning again, its indulgence in blood and gore is endless and unrelenting, glorifying in murder, mayhem, mutilation, decapitation, cannibalism, torture, and the destruction of every body part, public and private, you can name; yet it manages to engross the senses from the first minute to the last. For its target audience, “Sin City” can be a load of fun, enormously fascinating, mostly entertaining, and always a delight to the eyes and ears, if not always to the stomach.

Picture Quality:

From the beginning, we know we are being treated to a visual experience unlike any other in recent memory. Coppola’s “Rumble Fish” comes to mind, but that film was simply black and white photography with one short scene where Siamese fighting fish are shown in vivid color. “Sin City” was shot with actors in front of blue screens where the environments were later added in digitally, just like the similarly digitally-filmed “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”. The results are a virtual panoply of blacks, whites, shadow play, and strategically-inserted objects in vivid color, mostly red. We see these in the form of a dress, lips, eyes, sneakers, cars, police lights, blood, a yellow bastard, etc. Because the producers have pain-stakingly recreated the look of the original comic book series, depth perception is mostly absent in this two-dimensional looking world, but with the high bit-rate transfer, the sharpness and detailing, particularly the actors’ faces are exceptional. Black levels are rich and deep providing much opportunity for strong contrasting, especially when the objects of color show up. 

Audio Quality:

Though we are given a choice between Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1, this review covers the DTS track; my choice whenever I am given that option. The sound mix on this DVD is, in a word, robust. Punches and gunshots come through with an added sense of urgency, Rourke’s narration during his segment reverberates the lower registers such that it is literally stomach-churning. The music score by Rodriguez, John Debney, and Graeme Revell echoes the urban detective beats of Henry Mancini’s themes from “A Shot in the Dark” and “Peter Gunn”. Dialogue is always clear and never drowned out by the surrounding action. 

Scenes For Demonstration Purposes:

The entire movie is one long demonstration piece but highlights, though short, include: 1. (14:00) – Marv makes his escape. 2. (29:30) – Marv dispatches the cops. 3. (60:00) – Miho slices up Jackie Boy’s boys. 4. (84:00) – The girls of Old Town take care of business. 5. (112:26) – Hartigan’s final meeting with That Yellow Bastard.

Special Features:

This bare-bones single-disc edition is reportedly a prelude to a forth-coming multi-disc deluxe edition; however, as of this writing, we are still waiting for a “promised” “Kill Bill” deluxe edition to even be announced; so who knows? Besides the theatrical feature, we have a short 9 minute “Behind The Scenes” featurette that is a standard collection of cast and crew interviews with clips from the film. “Sneak Peeks” offers trailers from “Mindhunters”, “Spiderman: The ’67 Collection”, and a couple of ABC TV series “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives”. That’s it! Hopefully Rodriguez will make good on his promise to release a more comprehensive edition to this modern classic soon.