Dubby Bhagat

Kathmandu:

Noir or dark films have a new face. Rober Rodriguez who directed ‘Once Upon A Time In America’ and ‘Spy Kids’ turns a baleful look at comic book creator Frank Millers world of crooked cops tough guys and vengeful broads in ‘Sin City,’ a film being hailed as a stylistic trendsetter with the twin themes of violence and redemption. Quentin Tarantino directed one segment but it was the genius of Frank Miller who dogged Rodriguez’s footstep every frame or (in comic book terms) panel of the way. Called “wickedly depraved,” ‘Sin City’ it is a bang-on homage to the dark writings of Hammet, Chandler, Cain and Spillane with twisted characters, serpentine plots and dialogue that is as hard as a dead sentence. Said critic David Horiuchi, “In the first three separate but loosely related stories. Marv (Mickey Rourke in heavy makeup) tries to track down the killers of a woman who ended up dead in his bed.” In the second story Dwight’s (Clive Owen) attempt to defend a woman from a brutal abuser goes horribly wrong, and threatens to destroy the uneasy truce among the police, the mob, and the women of Old Town. Finally, an aging cop on his last day on the job (Bruce Willis) rescues a young girl from a kidnapper, but is himself thrown in jail. Years later, he has a chance to save her again. Rodriguez looks on ‘Sin City’ as a translation rather than an adaptation of Frank Millers comics and went so far as to resign from the Directors’ Guild so Miller could share direction credit.

Tarantino sums it up best with, “It’s a movie turned into a comic book and not the other way around. It was true to Frank Miller drawings, it’s like the real ‘Sin City’scape and horizons and the silhouettes and all that cool stuff.” The backgrounds are all computer generated and the movie is in black and white with occasional explosions or subtle introduction of colour. Said Robert Rodriguez, “Having learned all this technology, I looked at the books again with fresh eyes and thought, “Oh! I know how to bring this to life the way I’ve always loved, the way it looked.’” Frank Miller adds, “I’ve got a good life drawing the comic books, and there’s really no need to let anybody have my baby. I held to that line until this Rodriguez guy started bugging my attorney and my editor and hunting me down like a wild dog. I was seduced. He showed me what he had in mind and offered me a wonderful position in the production. I’ve been startled by how faithful it is to the original.”

The almost unwieldy cast includes Jessica Alba, Jamie King, Benicio Del Toro, Elijah Wood and a host of others acting in an almost amorally skewed world of killers who are sometimes good, corruption that bursts and women who are prostitutes or strippers with intentions (if not hearts) of tinsel bent on surviving ‘Sin City.’ Critics have noted with disapproval of everything from cannibalism to child abuse, mutilation and rape. Del Toro, a baddie who, during the course of one night, gets his head dunked in a toilet, has his hand sliced off, his forehead becomes the receptacle of the peg-like object reinforces what you know; crime doesn’t pay. And the last shot in ‘Sin City’ (both literally and metaphorically) is about redemption.