Sin City: The Miller's Tale

1 Comments:

 Anonymous said...

Salzberg, you old so and so! I haven't seen Sin City yet, but I think this review has pushed me a little closer to the tipping point, as it were. Glad to see that you're finally sharing your writing with the public at large (or the public at little).

I just might have steal your RSS feed...

4/25/2005 3:35 PM  

Holy guacamole. I went to see Frank Miller's Sin City at the Uptown Theater at Cleveland Park on opening night (April Fools Day, 2005). Now I knew that Frank Miller was a dark, dark soul, but I was not prepared for the sheer level of gore and psychic trauma that was splashed all over the 2,240 square feet of the screen (32' x 70'). Nary a commandment was left intact over the course of 126 minutes.

I'm thinking that the only reason that the MPAA let this movie through with an R rating was the beautifully stylized rendering that softens the edges of the numerous and explicit violations of almost every societal taboo. The visual effects have hints of some of the more memorable moments in "The Minority Report", "Schindler's List", and the now ubiquitous Apple iPod televisions spots.

I'm not going to spoil this film by discussing it in more detail. But suffice to say that when I left the theater, I saw a small mob of young college-age women run out of the theater at a significant fraction of light speed. I haven't seen people flee a movie like that since a late night showing of "Silence of the Lambs" in a small town mall in Ohio [start creepy music here]... Every woman who left that theater was scoping the parking lot and reaching for her mace. Later that month, I saw "Misery" at that same theater and noticed that every guy was eyeing their girlfriend with more than a hint of suspicion.

Ah well, movies tend to linger for a few hours if they're executed well... And boy oh boy were there a lot of executions in this movie...

Standout performances include Mickey Rourke, who shines in his role as Marv, and Devon Aoki, who makes the Thurman/Liu swordplay in Kill Bill look like the first day in cooking school. This is Batman, the Dark Knight, without the veneer of law-abiding respectability enforced by Bruce Wayne's public image. This thing is raw, unfettered, and crafted in keeping with Frank Miller's astonishing reputation and legacy.

On an aside, I noticed that Frank Miller was born in Olney, Maryland which is about 20 minutes north of DC. There's a thriving and historic Quaker community in Olney centered around the Sandy Spring Friends School and Quaker meetinghouse. Kind of ironic that pacifism bred an artist and writer who consistently portrays the darker side of human nature...

Sin City. You'll either hate it or love it. As for myself, I thought it rocked.

 

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