skin city

Hillbilly and I went to see Sin City at the friendly neighborhood Alamo Drafthouse the other night. The hype for this flick has been substantial, and most of it is well-deserved because Robert Rodriguez and friends have created a uniquely visceral film experience. Hell, my spine actually tingled once or twice, and I don't think it was just the Hoegaarden.

The opening scenes are a visual splendor, making perhaps the best case yet for digital filmmaking. I love classic Bogart detective films, and Sin City breathes modern aesthetics and indelible color into their time-worn black-and-white tapestries. To bastardize a line from The Iron Giant, "it's like noir-zilla."

And yet, I can't say it's a particularly great movie. Devin's Sin City review at CHUD captures most of my criticism, except I am diametrically opposed to his praise for Brittany Murphy. Even if her dialogue is intended to be tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top, or some other three-way-hyphenation, it still takes better chops than hers to keep it on this side of Cheddar. A few of the menfolk (Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, and Clive Owen) push out their lines with enough conviction and pinache that the comic book dialogue seems appropriate, if repetitive and stilted. The ladies have a more difficult task, because they are all required to be sexy (and mostly naked) while also being hard and ruthless. At it's worst we get that Gilmore Girl who is as bad as she is miscast. At it's best we get Jessica Alba being smokin' hot in between stabs at Acting.

It's easy to beat up the actors, but such criticism ultimately reflects upon the man who built their one-dimensional characters. Devin's money quote about Sin City pretty much sums it up:

The trailers left me cold – the whole thing looked like a fan film writ large, and while it sort of is that, it’s also an accomplished piece of work – the work of a technician at the height of his game. But it’s too bad that Robert Rodriguez doesn’t bring any art to his technical achievement.

I've always been a fan of Robert Rodriguez's stripped-down action ethic. His energy is palpable on the screen, tilting bloated Hollywood fare on its ear with his frenetic and individualistic creativity. He also has a great eye for set-pieces: Desperado's bar shoot-outs, the gas station robbery in From Dusk Till Dawn, and Johnny Depp's blind gunplay in Once Upon a Time in Mexico are brilliantly staged sequences chock full of iconic visuals. When those elements are mixed with wit and character development, the results are extremely entertaining.

And yet it seems that Rodriguez's direction increasingly accommodates individual stylistic elements at the expense of a coherent story; plot elements are little more than a set-up for the next confrontation. Sin City is especially susceptible to this imbalance since it is an anthology of action driven solely by Machiavellian heroism, where violence brings redemption and morality is defined by the depravity of whoever eats your next bullet. Sin City is a tightly-directed, innovative, and attractive film, but it is also, unfortunately, a slickly forgettable piece of work.

Not everyone will see Sin City and care two wits about the absence of character arcs, but I can't help but mourn for what could have been. Only someone like Robert Rodriguez, willing to quit the Director's Guild in order to retain a co-directing credit with creator Frank Miller, could have produced something with such unique dedication and vision. But what they've created isn't a movie so much as a loving recreation of still images set into motion. Sin City could almost get by as a silent film with its stories told on flashcards. While it makes for some awfully impressive scenery, I was bored at the end of the 2 hour ride.