Sin City (film)

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Sin City

Directed by	Frank Miller Robert Rodriguez Quentin Tarantino (Special Guest Director)
Produced by	Elizabeth Avellan Frank Miller Robert Rodriguez
Written by	Frank Miller
Starring	Bruce Willis Mickey Rourke Clive Owen Jessica Alba Benicio Del Toro Brittany Murphy Nick Stahl Elijah Wood Rosario Dawson Jaime King Michael Clarke Duncan Alexis Bledel Josh Hartnett Devon Aoki Carla Gugino
Music by	John Debney Graeme Revell Robert Rodriguez
Cinematography	Robert Rodriguez
Editing by	Robert Rodriguez
Distributed by	Dimension Films
Release date(s)	April 1, 2005
Running time	124 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	$40,000,000
Followed by	Sin City 2
IMDb profile

Sin City is a 2005 neo-noir anthology film based on the graphic novel series of the same name, directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez and with "Special Guest Director" Quentin Tarantino.

Specifically, the film is primarily based on four Sin City stories: "The Customer is Always Right", "The Hard Goodbye", "The Big Fat Kill" and "That Yellow Bastard". There is also a short epilogue written exclusively for the film. The stories revolve around the various residents of Basin City, a fictional town where violence and corruption are considered normal. Tales of murder, revenge, lust, cover-ups, and redemption weave together throughout the film's timeline.

Sin City was screened at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival in competition. While some felt having an American film based on a violent comic book being screened for competition was inappropriate, the film was well-received at the festival and won Robert Rodriguez the Technical Grand Prize for the film's "visual shaping." ^[1]

1 Production
2 Plot
3 Reaction
4 Cast
5 Soundtrack
6 Sequels
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Production

After a particularly bad Hollywood experience on the third RoboCop movie, Sin City creator Frank Miller did not want to release the movie rights in fear of a similar result. However, Robert Rodriguez, a long-time fan of the graphic novels, was eager to make an adaptation. His plan was to make a fully authentic adaptation, follow the source material closely, and make a "translation, not an adaptation."

In hopes of convincing Miller to give the project his blessing, Rodriguez shot a "proof of concept" adaptation of the Sin City story "The Customer is Always Right" (starring Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton) in an attempt to convince Miller that the film would be as faithful to the source as possible. Rodriguez flew Miller into Austin to be present at this test shooting, and Miller was very happy with the results. Soon production was underway with Miller wanting to be as involved with the project as possible (this "proof of concept" adaptation was later used as the opening scene for the completed film).

Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller on the set of the film.

This is one of the first films (along with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Casshern, and Immortel (Ad Vitam)) to be shot primarily on a digital backlot. The movie employed the use of the Sony HDC-950 high-definition digital camera, having the actors work in front of a green screen, that allowed for the artificial backgrounds (as well as some major foreground elements, such as cars) to be added later during the post-production stage. However, it should be noted that three of the sets on the film were practical (i.e. constructed by hand). They were:

Kadie's Bar, where all of the major characters make an appearance at least once.
Shellie's apartment. The front door and kitchen are real, while bathroom and corridors are artificial.
The hospital corridor in the epilogue. Although the first shot of walking feet was done on greenscreen, the corridor in the next shot is real. The background becomes artificial again when the interior of the elevator is shown.

Top frame, the finished film. Bottom frame, the scene being filmed. Both the actress (Alexis Bledel) and the car are stationary; the actress is walking in place on a treadmill.

While the use of a green screen has become quite standard for special effects filming, the use of high-definition digital cameras is quite noteworthy in the production of this film. The combination of these two techniques makes Sin City (along with Sky Captain, which was produced the same way) one of the few fully digital, live action motion pictures. This technique also means that the whole movie was initially shot in full color, and was converted back to high-quality black-and-white. Colorization is used on certain subjects in a scene, such as eyes, lips, or clothing. The movie was color corrected digitally and, as in film noir tradition, treated for heightened contrast so as to more clearly separate blacks and whites. This was done not only to give the film a more film noir look, but also to make it appear more like the original comic. This technique was used again on another Frank Miller-adaptation, 300, which was shot on film.

Principal photography began on March 29, 2004. Several of the scenes were shot before every actor was currently signed-on; as a result, several stand-ins were used before the actual actors were digitally added into the film during post-production. ^[2] Rodriguez, an aficionado of cinematic technology, has used similar techniques in the past. In ^[3] critic Roger Ebert's review of the film, he recalled Rodriguez's speech during production of Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams: "This is the future! You don't wait six hours for a scene to be lighted. You want a light over here, you grab a light and put it over here. You want a nuclear submarine, you make one out of thin air and put your characters into it."

The film was noted throughout production for Rodriguez's plan to stay faithful to the source material, unlike most other comic book adaptations. Rodriguez stated that he considered the film to be "less of an adaptation than a translation." ^[4] As a result, there is no screenwriting in the credits; simply "Based on the graphic novels by Frank Miller." There were several minor changes, such as dialogue trimming, new colorized objects, removal of some nudity, slightly edited violence and minor deleted scenes. A full list of differences can be viewed here.

Three directors received credit for Sin City: Miller, Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, the latter for directing one scene in the movie--a rather sprawling number for a film budgeted at just $40 million. Miller and Rodriguez were very much a team as far as directing the rest of the film. Despite having no previous directorial background, Miller was greatly involved in the direction of the film, providing direction to the actors on their motivations and what they needed to bring to each scene. Because of this (not to mention the fact that Miller's original novels were used as storyboards), Rodriguez felt that they should both be credited as directors on the film.

When the Directors Guild of America refused to allow two directors that were not an established team to be credited (especially since Miller had never directed before), Rodriguez first planned to give Miller full credit. Miller would not accept this, as he certainly could not have done it without Rodriguez. Rodriguez, also refusing to take full credit, decided to resign from the Guild so that the joint credit could remain.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film does not take place in chronological order; the plot follows several different timelines in a non-linear manner.

[edit] The Customer is Always Right

It opens on a balcony, overlooking the highlights of Basin City, otherwise known as Sin City, a grimy, violent and corrupted city of endless pain and sadness. The Customer (Marley Shelton), a woman in a red dress, steps onto the balcony and is greeted by The Salesman (Josh Hartnett, also known as The Colonel and The Man), who offers her a cigarette and embraces her before shooting her; "The silencer makes a whisper of the gunshot. I hold her close until she's gone. I'll never know what she was running from. I'll cash her check in the morning."

Trivia: Frank Miller explains in the Special Edition DVD commentary Marley Shelton, looking for motivation, asked why her character would pay to be killed. Miller explained she had unknowingly fallen in love with a gangster and broke off the relationship immediately. In a fit of rage, he promised she could never get away and someday when she had forgotten him he would be there, he would kill her, and it wouldn't happen quickly. Believing him and fearing for her life and unable to live with the paranoia she takes a contract on herself. Miller credits this as the point where he became a director.

[edit] That Yellow Bastard (Prologue)

Bruce Willis as Hartigan.

The story then moves to a waterfront, where we meet aging cop John Hartigan (Bruce Willis), an honest man who will be retiring as soon as he rescues pre-teen Nancy Callahan from Roark Junior (Nick Stahl), the scion of the powerful Roark family who is also a rapist and serial killer of young girls. His partner, Bob (Michael Madsen), unsuccessfully tries to stop him, as do Shlubb and Klump, two of Junior’s bodyguards.

Hartigan chases Junior to a dock and shoots off his ear, hand and genitals. Bob, who it turns out is on the Roarks' payroll, shoots Hartigan several times in the back, seriously injuring him and leaving Nancy cowering in tears.

[edit] The Hard Goodbye

The story then cuts to Marv (Mickey Rourke), a hulking thug, who is in a hotel room with Goldie (Jaime King), a beautiful woman. They make love, and after several hours, Marv awakens to find Goldie dead next to him. He realizes he's been set up when he hears the police coming down the street, and once they arrive, he escapes from his room, fights off the police on the street and steals their car.

Mickey Rourke as Marv and Jaime King as Wendy.

He stops to visit Lucille (Carla Gugino), his parole officer, who unsuccessfully tries to convince him not to hunt down Goldie’s killer. He goes to Kadie’s Bar, a sleazy saloon he often visits. He takes several shots before two hitmen arrive and take him to a back alley. He kills one and tortures the other to find out who sent them.

From there, he works his way through the ranks, torturing one crook after another to find out who’s behind the whole scheme. It brings him to a priest (Miller, making a special cameo), who informs him that the Roark family is behind the whole thing. Marv kills the priest and moves on, but as he is about to leave, a woman who looks almost exactly like Goldie shows up, hits him several times with her car, and shoots at him several times before taking off.

Marv drives to the Roark family farm, where he hopes to find answers to Goldie's death. He fights off a wolf and is attacked by Kevin (Elijah Wood), the homicidal, cannibalistic werewolf who murdered Goldie. He knocks Marv out with a sledgehammer and locks him in the basement. When Marv awakens, he finds the mounted heads of girls on the wall, as well as a nude Lucille, who is in shock after Kevin severed and ate her hand. Marv breaks out of the basement with Lucille, just as various officers arrive. They kill Lucille, and Marv dispatches them with a hatchet. He also learns from the captain that the operation all leads to Cardinal Roark (Rutger Hauer), the brother of Senator Roark. Marv reflects on his confused state and decides to find some evidence before murdering the Cardinal.

He goes to Old Town, a section of Sin City owned and enforced by prostitutes. The Goldie look-alike appears, wounds him and ties him up, where he is interrogated by several prostitutes. The look-alike is Wendy, Goldie’s twin sister. After realizing Marv isn’t the one who has been killing prostitutes, they let him go (or rather, they do not object when he unties himself).

Marv plans to return to the farm and murder Kevin. Wendy goes with him, and Marv tells her about how Goldie was the perfect woman. Arriving at the farm, Marv knocks out Kevin before severing his arms and legs. The wolf then feeds on him before he is decapitated. Marv drops off Wendy and takes the head of Kevin to Cardinal Roark.

Cardinal Roark reveals that eating bodies gave Kevin religious satisfaction, claiming that he could feel the touch of God. Roark had then joined in, and prostitutes were easy targets because they were unlikely to be missed after being murdered. Goldie, however, was the exception; her murder prompts Marv's obsession in solving the case. Marv then kills Cardinal Roark before his guards riddle him with gunfire, seriously crippling him.

Marv spends several months recovering and is tortured when he is released. He refuses to sign a confession until his mother is threatened. He is sent to death row, and on the night of his execution, Wendy visits him to make love. Afterwards, he is executed in the electric chair, although it takes two attempts to kill him. The first time he remains conscious and mutters "Is that the best you can do, you pansies?"

Trivia: Mickey Rourke and Elijah Wood never met until the film premiere although they share a fight sequence.

[edit] The Big Fat Kill

The story then moves to Dwight McCarthy (Clive Owen), a private investigator who has recently had surgery to give himself a new face. His girlfriend, Shellie (Brittany Murphy) is having trouble with her ex-boyfriend Jack Rafferty (Benicio Del Toro), an abusive drunk who has stopped by tonight with a group of his friends to have a party there. Jack goes to the bathroom, where Dwight is hiding. Dwight threatens Jack if he harms Shellie again, dunks his head in the toilet and holds him there until he stops moving before disappearing. But Jack lives, wakes up, lifts his head out of the toilet, and vomits up his own urine. Furious, Rafferty and his buddies pile into his car and scream off.

Clive Owen as Dwight.

Followed by Dwight, Jack and his pals go to Old Town to look for a woman to spend the night with. They find Becky (Alexis Bledel), a young and inexperienced prostitute. Dwight watches them alongside his on-and-off lover Gail (Rosario Dawson), the leader of the other prostitutes. Miho (Devon Aoki), a skilled assassin, is walking along the rooftops to watch Rafferty and his friends.

When Becky refuses to get in the car, Rafferty pulls a gun on her. Miho then swoops down and mutilates him and his friends. Once they are dead, Dwight realizes that Rafferty was a police officer. For years, the prostitutes have held an uneasy truce with the police, and the death of Sin City’s finest will ignite a bloody turf war.

Dwight takes the bodies to a tar pit for disposal. Rafferty's corpse sits in the front seat with him, and Dwight hallucinates that he is still alive and taunting him. Once at The Pits, Dwight is shot by an Irish mercenary. Back in Old Town, Gail is kidnapped by Manute (Michael Clarke Duncan), the leader of the mercenaries. One of the prostitutes has informed them of the murder, and now the mercenaries are swooping in to collect the evidence and conquer Old Town.

Back at The Pits, the mercenaries pick up Rafferty's badge, and notice something lodged in it: the bullet. They turn to look at Dwight, just as he jumps up and shoots them. A grenade is tossed, rocking Dwight and the vehicle into the tar. Mercenaries collect Jackie Boy’s head as Dwight sinks, but he is rescued by Miho. They chase down the terrorists, get into another shoot-out and retrieve the head. They then return to Old Town, where Gail is being tortured and Becky is revealed to be the informant. Everyone moves to the back alley, where Dwight is waiting for them. He trades the head for Gail; a grenade (taken from one of the mercenaries) is in Rafferty's mouth, and it explodes, killing some of the mercenaries. Then, dozens of Old Town prostitutes arrive, slaughtering the remaining thugs and shoot Becky in the arm (though she escapes).

[edit] That Yellow Bastard

The story then cuts back to Hartigan, who is currently in a hospital. Meeting him is Senator Roark (Powers Boothe), who tells him that Junior is in a coma and may never come out of it. Hartigan is going to be framed for Junior’s actions and if he says otherwise anyone who knows the truth will be killed.

Hartigan is sent to prison, branded a child molester, and abandoned by everyone he loves. The only thing that keeps him going for the next eight years are letters from Nancy every Thursday; he grows to love her like the daughter he never had. After her letters stop coming, however, a severed finger is delivered in an envelope. He is then visited by a stranger with bright yellow skin who smells like rotting garbage, who punches him out. Desperate to get out, Hartigan confesses to Junior's crime and is released. His search for Nancy leads him to Kadie’s Bar, where a nineteen year-old Nancy (Jessica Alba) now works as an exotic dancer. He realizes that he has been lured into a trap, Nancy was never hurt, the finger came from someone else and the "Yellow Bastard" has followed him here.

Jessica Alba as Nancy and Nick Stahl as Yellow Bastard.

Hartigan and Nancy leave the bar and drive to a motel. During the ride, Yellow Bastard appears and tries to shoot them. They lose him and go to the motel, where Nancy confesses her love to Hartigan before the Yellow Bastard arrives and knocks him unconscious. When Hartigan awakes, the stranger reveals himself to be none other than Roark Junior, who has been repaired by new medical techniques funded by his father, although the resulting side-effects include yellow skin, total baldness and the rotten smell. He hangs Hartigan from a noose and holds Nancy prisoner. He leaves Hartigan for dead, but Hartigan breaks free and, with the help of Shlubb and Klump, finds out where the Yellow Bastard is going: the Roark family farm.

At the farm, Hartigan takes down several guards before hearing Yellow Bastard whip Nancy in the farmhouse. The two of them walk down to meet Hartigan, who fakes a heart attack before stabbing and castrating him, and then beats his head into a pulp.

Nancy and Hartigan say goodbye. Alone, Hartigan realizes that Yellow Bastard's death will provoke Senator Roark's fury, and will probably get Nancy killed. He commits suicide, it being the only way Nancy can escape the wrath of the Roarks.

[edit] Epilogue

The last scene moves to the hospital, where Becky is talking to her mother after the shoot-out. As she enters the elevator, the Salesman appears, who asks her if she would like a cigarette.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Reaction

The film opened to largely positive reviews, receiving a 78% “Certified Fresh” rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert awarded the film four stars, describing it as "a visualization of the pulp noir imagination, uncompromising and extreme. Yes, and brilliant."^[5]Online critical reaction was particularly strong: James Berardinelli placed the film on his list of the ten best films of 2005.[5] Several critics compared the film favorably to other comic book adaptations. Critic Chauncey Mabe of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel wrote, "Really, there will be no reason for anyone to make a comic-book movie ever again. Miller and Rodriguez have pushed the form as far as it can possibly go."^[6]

The majority of the criticism was directed towards the film’s nihilism and graphic violence. William Arnold of the Seattle-Post Intelligencer slammed the film as "super-corrupt, super-violent, super-shadowy, and in every other way super-exaggerated."[6] New York Times critic Manohla Dargis claims that it is "hard to get pulled into the story on any level other than the visceral," writing the film off as Rodriguez's hermetic, "private experience" and a "bore."[7] Times critic A. O. Scott, identifying Who Framed Roger Rabbit as its chief cinematic predecessor, argues "Sin City offers sensation without feeling, death without grief, sin without guilt and, ultimately, novelty without surprise."[8]

The film grossed $29.1 million over opening weekend, opening as the #1 movie in America. However, like many highly promoted films, its box office receipts swiftly declined (dropping over 50% in its second week); Sin City ended its theatrical run with a total North American box office gross of $74.1 million.

Source	Gross (USD)	% Total
USA Opening Weekend	$29,129,273	39.3%
USA	$74.1 M	46.7%
Rest of the world	$84,630,000	53.3%
Worldwide	$158.7 M	100.0%

The Recut, Extended, Unrated Edition.

The Region 1 DVD was released on August 16, 2005. The single-disc edition was released with four different slipcovers to choose from and featured a "Behind-the-Scenes" documentary. Then, on December 13, 2005, the special edition DVD was released, known as the "Recut, Extended, Unrated" edition.

The Special Edition was a two-disc set, featuring both the 126 minute theatrical release, along with the 147 minute Extended edition (this edition restored edited and deleted scenes that were missing from the theatrical edition). Bonus material included an audio commentary with director Rodriguez and Miller, a commentary with Rodriguez and Tarantino, and a third commentary featuring the recorded "audience reaction" at the Austin, Texas Premiere.

Additional extras included "15 Minute Flick School" and "10 Minute Cooking School" (both recurring features on Rodriguez's DVD's), a seventeen-minute take of Tarantino's segment, footage of a Sin City cast/crew party, featurettes on the cars, special effects, make-up, costumes and props. Additionally, there was the feature "How it Went Down" which detailed the process it took to convince Miller to make the film. There were also features on the casting and more information regarding Tarantino's segment. The "High-Speed Green Screen" version was also included, which was an accelerated version of the film with the green screen still intact. Sin-Chroni-City, an interactive game, was also included, as were trailers. The final feature was the complete graphic novel "The Hard Goodbye", one of the stories the film was based on (the book is commonly priced at $17.00 US).

The Region 2 & Region 4 Special Edition DVD has been released since November 16, 2006.