SIN CITY (2005)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *good*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Frank Miller's SIN CITY graphic novels and the films adapted from them prove difficult, though not impossible, to classify.

The difficulty inheres in the fact that Miller's quasi-anthology series takes its primary inspiration from naturalistic sources, such as films noirs and the hardboiled detective genre, particularly as executed by author Mickey Spillane, ostensibly one of Miller's strongest influences.  However, while these works usually take their rigor from the sense that their protagonists exist in a world without miracles, Frank Miller made his mark in comic books with costumed superheroes like Batman and Daredevil. He could have chosen to make his Sin City books entirely naturalistic, but instead he injects moments of the metaphenomenal, usually dealing with uncanny forms of grotesquerie.

The 2005 SIN CITY adapts three of Miller's best graphic novels, adding a new story as a framing-device. The weakest of these is is "The Big Fat Kill," in large part because it spotlights a character who was introduced in an earlier appearance-- the very story that gets the titular focus in the sequel film, "A Dame to Kill For." In "Fat Kill," tough guy Dwight (Clive Owen) falls afoul of a nasty fellow named Jackie-Boy, and despite his attempts to withdraw, Jackie-Boy's nastiness earns him a gory demise at the hands of Dwight's allies, a group of wildly-costumed prostitutes, particularly their ninja-like protector Miho (Devon Aoki). Unfortunately for Dwight, Jackie-Boy turns out to be a cop, and he and the girls must seek to conceal his death from Sin City's constabulary, who will use the scumbag's death as an excuse to shut down the girls' operation. Despite some of the outrageous kung-fu feats of Miho, "Kill" is firmly in the naturalistic vein-- though like the graphic novel, the narrative erects a Jenga-like tower of tumbling coincidences.

"That Yellow Bastard" is much better, both as original and as adaptation. Sixty-year-old veteran cop Hartigan (Bruce Willis) devotes himself to bringing down a vicious child-rapist, "Junior" (Nick Stahl), who happens to be connected to the Roarks, the wealthiest family in Sin City. Hartigan's reward for saving a young girl named Nancy from rape is that the Roarks frame him and send him away for eight years. He's finally released when he confesses to crimes he didn't commit, but it's a set-up: the Roarks want him to seek out Nancy, who has escaped their clutches. In the eight years of Hartigan's absence, Nancy has become a voluptuous stripper (Jessica Alba), and even while protecting her, Hartigan has to deal with the fact that she's fallen in love with him. Hartigan's primary foe is a freakishly recrudescent form of Junior, whose skin has turned yellow due to the medical treatments that saved his life. Although the duel of Junior and Hartigan is entirely in the vein of the hardboiled dick story, both the makeup and Nick Stahl's performance make the bizarre child-rapist an eerie personage.

I have special feelings about "The Hard Goodbye" as a graphic novel. It was the first of Miller's SIN CITY novels, and it remains Miller's best work in this franchise.  Mickey Rourke plays Marv, a hulking reprobate who spends most of his time sitting around swilling beer in strip-joints-- until he meets a woman who seduces him to serve as her protector. She's killed despite his presence, and Marv goes on a holy crusade to ferret out her killers-- who turn out to be a "weird family" of two homosexual cannibals.  Marv himself is almost a borderline superhero, given that he tears through armed men like the Wolverine and shrugs off being hit by a car. I could see him being uncanny in the same way certain "strongmen" heroes in Italian fantasy-films are uncanny, though the presence of the killer cannibals is the more important factor. Unfortunately, though director Rodriguez adapts the material faithfully, he rushes through some of Miller's best sequences, so that it's no more than an adequate adaptation of the original.  The highlights are the actors' recreations of Miller's outsized characters, with Rourke as Marv and Elijah Wood as the unspeaking cannibal Kevin taking top honors.