It’s mostly black and white
Robert Rodriguez had a large project to think about when it came to Sin City. He had the passion to do the project, but he needed to convince Frank Miller of that. So, he drew up a concept, shot it and brought it to Miller. Frank Miller is a person, much like Alan Moore, who has been scorned a bit by Hollywood when it came to creative liberties on his work. If you need an example, please see Robocop 2. Anyway, Sin City was his pride and joy; probably more so than The Dark Knight Returns. So, no matter who did it, Miller would make sure that it was done right and to his liking.
After seeing Rodriguez’s vision, Miller was sold.
Not familiar with Sin City? It’s one of the more unusual brutal stories of a group of people who have their own stories entangled together in some warped way. You’ve got a cop that is trying to protect a little girl from a rapist molester. A hitman trying to get a girl out of danger from her abusive boyfriend. And a monster-saint who is trying to get revenge for the only girl who treated him like a normal human being. All of these collective stories meet together in one weird combination.
Now, from a critical viewpoint, this movie really went over-the-top when it came to dialogue and voice-over. There is a TON of dialogue. More dialogue than I can remember ever in a film. You are basically given a description of everything as it goes down. You get different viewpoints, commentary about actions (such as ripping a man’s testicles out) and just a full-out disclosure that runs from scene-to-scene. Most people would be driven nuts from this. Thankfully, if you go into the movie expecting a comic-to-movie translation, it’s everything you would expect. As there are a limited amount of frames to work with on one comic book page, there has to be a lot of dialogue. Rodriguez did a perfect job about keeping that intact in the film. If you’re a fan of the original graphic novel, then you’re right at home with the style. Plus, to boot, Rodriguez basically kept the comic visually intact. You get that noir film to the film with heavy blacks/whites and once in awhile, when it’s needed (because there is underlying art within art) you get some color that points out emotions and feelings. Sin City by all intents and purposes is the perfect way to translate a comic book to film (and be successful).
With that said, I thought the dialogue was a bit stale in some areas. Mickey Rourke did a fine job with his character Marv, a giant horribly scarred brute. He was tough, he delivered the dialogue tough. Loved him! The opposite of that was Bruce Willis as Hartigan. The only reason I didn’t skip the story is because Michael Madsen was spouting off dialogue like he was holding a piece of paper with it written on there. He was awful, which made Willis that much better. With that amount of dialogue though, I would imagine that most actors aren’t use to it. That’s certainly understandable, but regretful in the end.
Kill’em Good with Blu-ray
Yeah… so get this, you know what two sorta colors are beneficial of Blu-ray? Blacks and Whites. Do you know what Sin City mainly consists of? You guessed it! So with those two items in place, the visuals for this Blu-ray are some of the best that I’ve experienced. So much so that I will now use this as the judgement bar for all Blu-rays. I haven’t seen anything better than this and it’s sort of unfair, but what can you do? Nothing, just enjoy it. Both the visuals and audio are really well mastered, so you get the best of both worlds in this film when it comes to Blu-ray.
As for features, here’s what you’re looking at:
– Commentary with Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller
– Commentary with Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino
– Audio Track Featuring a recording of the Austin Audience Reaction (kind of neat)
– Kill’em Good Interactive Comic Book
– Rodriguez Special Features
– 15-Minute Film School
– All Green-Screen Version
– The Long Take
– Sin City: Live in Concert
– 10-Minute Cooking School
– How It Went Down: Convincing Frank Miller to Make the Film
– Special Guest Director: Quentin Tarantino
– A Hard Top with a Decent Engine: The Cars of Sin City
– Booze, Broads and Guns: The Props of Sin City
– Making the Monsters: Special Effects Make-up
– Trench Coats & Fishnets: The Costumes of Sin City
– Teaser and Theatrical Trailer