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Sixty
Years of Sinema, Whipped to a Bloody Pulp
Sin City
Directed by Frank Miller and
Robert Rodriguez, with "Special Guest Director"
Quentin Tarantino
by Joe E. Rosewater
In these best and worst
of times, America, or at least everything we're known best
for, is shamelessly pumped on steroids. Major League Baseball,
obviously. Our Military Industrial Complex, even more so.
Even Rock N' Roll, in the form of Green Day, the Only Band
That Comes Close to Mattering, whose multi-platinum American
Idiot is essentially mood-swinging pop-punk 'roid-rage.
Of course, our chief exports,
the Blockbuster Movies, have been on the juice longer than
Jose Canseco, from Peckinpah Westerns like The Wild Bunch
to Bruckheimer/Bay Blow-Em-Ups like Bad Boys 2. And
Blockbuster Movie versions of another of our great Pop Culture
contributions, Comic Books (or Graphic Novels, to be Politcally
Correct), are sticking the proverbial needles in their asses
now more than ever (see Sam Raimi's Spider-Man series).
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So it's about damn time our beloved genre of Film
Noir received a mega-dose of testosterone, thanks to Robert Rodriguez,
shooter and cutter (also scorer and visual effects supervisor) of
Sin City. Naturally, it's based on a Graphic Novel ("graphic"
meaning both illustrated and ridiculously violent) written by Frank
Miller, who receives co-director credit because the film is religiously
faithful to its source material.
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All the standards of the genre
are there, and blown to gigantic new proportions (which seems
logical, given that Noir was borne out of a surplus of nihilism,
bloodlust and paranoia in the post-WWII American psyche, all
of which have been blown gigantically out of proportion in our
current Terror Alert state of mind). Hookers and strippers (Rosario
Dawson, Jaime King, Jessica Alba) don't just have hearts of
gold; they're angels with uzis, and hotter than Hell to boot.
Hard-boiled heroes (Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke)
who wolf down pills for their "bum tickers" and crippling
psychoses can still survive hailstorms of machine gun fire,
and could strangle Superman with his own cape if they caught
him being as much of a bastard as he was in Miller's The
Dark Knight Strikes Back. To label the cops, priests, senators
and their lackeys (Rutger Hauer, Elijah Wood, Nick Stahl) corrupt
and immoral is a gross understatement- sometimes they eat the
hookers and mount their heads on the wall like hunting trophies.
True to the typical Rodriguez spirit of the "Mariachi"
trilogy and From Dusk Till Dawn, however, Sin City's
violence is often as funny as it is gruesome, if you find the
idea of talking decapitated heads funny. |
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and heroines, Rodriguez' bloodlust is nearly equalled by his
sensuality; his visual style has never been more poetic. Chapters
on "High-Contrast Lighting (Digital)" in film school
textbooks may eventually be re-edited to state simply, "See
Sin City." The whites can be blinding. The blacks
give new meaning to the term "negative space." The
grays in between make everything from Carla Gugino's curves
to Mickey Rourke's cracked skin practically tangible. And the
occasional colorbursts- Goldie the hooker's gorgeous blonde
locks, Marley Shelton's green eyes, the buckets of red (or yellow)
blood spilled every two minutes- are sheer brilliance. |
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So it won't complicate
your emotions or make you contemplate the ethics of issues like
euthanasia. But even if our nation's movie industry produced
a million Million Dollar Babys and not a single Sin
City, we wouldn't be the United States of A-fucking-merica,
now would we?
You Dig? You'll Dig...
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Kill Bill
Vol. 1 |
Touch of
Evil |
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The Robert Rodriguez Filmography
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Bedhead
(1991) |
El
Mariachi
(1992) |
Desperado
(1995) |
Four
Rooms-
(1995) |
From
Dusk Till Dawn
(1996) |
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The
Faculty
(1998) |
Spy
Kids
(2001) |
Spy
Kids 2:
The Island of Lost Dreams
(2002) |
Spy
Kids 3-D:
Game Over
(2003) |
Once
Upon a
Time in Mexico
(2003) |
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