Monday, July 18, 2005

Review - Sin City

Holy shit! This is an *awesome* movie! And I’m using the word euphemistically here…The style it oozes pretty much matches the blood the characters do. Rodriguez (‘Desperado’) is so good my awe over his talents has just surpassed my envy of them. And I hadn’t even heard of the comic series until this one came out.

So I’ve read books that blurred the line between poetry and prose, watched movies that mixed and matched genres, but nothing prepared me for this sort of an adaptation of a comic book. ‘The Hulk’ comes close but doesn’t quite cut it. The whole frames-sliding-in thing was a novelty alright, but it got tiring after a while. But this flick, this flick IS a comic book – partly due to the voice-over style of narration. An otherwise rather over-used plot device, it’s used to such good effect here [its pretty much like someone’s reading the comic for you], makes you wonder why other comic book adaptations didn’t think of something that obvious. – and partly due to the cinematography and screenplay. The cars are always jumping into the scene from the other side of a road-bump, headlights blazing and reflected on the shiny tar. And the film is shot using the chiaroscuro (fancy Italian for light-n-shade or B&W) technique (apparently just like the original comics were drawn), with the exception of blood, which is all sorts of colours including but not limited to red, blonde hair, which is well, blonde, and the Yellow Bastard, who is well, yellow. In fact, he couldn’t have been more yellow, given that there’s no other colour on the screen to distract you from it.

Apparently, Frank Miller, the creator of the dark and gloomy comic, disappointed with earlier Hollywood adaptation(s?), vowed not to sell out. So Rodriguez made the movie without his permission and sent him a copy. Way to break Miller’s inhibitions :D…The story-telling is very reminiscent of pulp fiction – awesome dialogues, cool soundtrack, awesome dialogues, interwoven and time-bending stories, highly interesting characters, did I mention awesome dialogues? The only difference (glaring only in hindsight) is probably the fact that none of the characters use the f word ever. ‘Pulp Fiction’ apparently uses it about 217 times. [I know, useless bit of trivia…:D]

On to the content then. There are 4 main stories with characters spanning the whole spectrum from larger-than-life good to perversely evil. The lead characters in all four narrate their own stories, all in the same style – crisp, short and wry. Yes, all the gory stuff is supposed to be sickening, but you can’t help nodding in approval when good kicks evil’s ass, just like the comic…err…movie, intended. Like one of the characters (Mickey Rourke) says, “the one good thing about killing bad guys is, you don’t have to feel bad doing it”. And the awesome dialogues (I could’ve sworn I didn’t mention them before) make even the perverse stuff funny and tolerable.

Go watch the movie already!