Sin City (film)
| Sin City | |
|---|---|
 IMDB File:4hv out of 5.png 8.5/10 (75,731 votes) | |
| Directed by | Robert Rodriguez Frank Miller Quentin Tarantino (special guest director) |
| Written by | Frank Miller Robert Rodriguez |
| Produced by | Robert Rodriguez Elizabeth Avellan Frank Miller |
| Starring | Bruce Willis Jessica Alba Mickey Rourke Clive Owen |
| Music by | John Debney Graeme Revell Robert Rodriguez Fluke |
| Distributed by | Dimension Films |
Release dates | April 1, 2005 |
Running time | 126 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $40,000,000 (estimated) |
Sin City is a 2005 neo-noir portmanteau film based on the graphic novels of the same name, directed by Robert Rodriguez.
Rodriguez also gave Sin City creator Frank Miller a directing credit on the film, crediting his visual style and its influence on the resulting film. However, the Director's Guild of America refused to recognize Rodriguez and Miller as being a bona-fide team. To avoid compromise, Rodriguez resigned from the Guild, and the joint credit remained.
Quentin Tarantino is credited as "Special Guest Director" for his role in helping to direct one scene in the movie.
The movie was released in cinemas across the U.S. on April 1, 2005 by Dimension Films.
Originally, creator Frank Miller did not want to release the movie rights of Sin City, because of a poor Hollywood experience in the early 1990s -- namely, the second and third RoboCop movies. However, director Robert Rodriguez shot a 'proof of concept' short movie of the Sin City story The Customer is Always Right (starring Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton, who did this for Rodriguez as a favor) and Frank Miller approved of the footage, and the movie was underway. Supposedly, Rodriguez also used the short film to convince the actors he wanted for parts to play them and reportedly, most were quite impressed. The short film was used as the opening of the finished film.
The movie is primarily based on four Sin City stories:
The movie also includes a short epilogue written exclusively for the movie by Rodriguez and Miller.
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."
Movie structure
Template:Spoiler The movie is constructed around five loosely connected stand-alone stories that are not necessarily presented in chronological order. All of the stories take place in Basin City (Appropriately nicknamed Sin City), a place overrun by filth, rain and corruption. The film opens with "The Customer is Always Right," a brief story about a woman who meets The Salesman (Josh Hartnett).
From this point on, we are introduced to Hartigan (Bruce Willis), a dying cop whose last mission is to protect young Nancy Callahan from a vicious child molester (Nick Stahl) in a story based on "That Yellow Bastard." After a brief part of this story, we move on to "The Hard Goodbye," a tale of how street hulk Marv (Mickey Rourke) spends a hot night with angelic hooker Goldie (Jaime King) who is then murdered by a cannibalistic hitman named Kevin (Elijah Wood). Marv becomes dangerously vengeful to avenge her death.
After the entirity of "Goodbye," we move on to "The Big Fat Kill," a story of Dwight (Clive Owen), a thug whose actions with dirty cop Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro) spark a catastrophic war between the police department and the hookers of Old Town (Including Rosario Dawson, Alexis Bledel, and Devon Aoki).
Afterwards, we finish the final two-thirds of "That Yellow Bastard," in which Hartigan's quest to save Nancy continues after eight years, in which she has become a grown woman (Jessica Alba) and the child molestor has become the Yellow Bastard.
After "Bastard" concludes, there is one last epilogue involving two characters from other stories. As one character says in the final epilogue, "Turn the right corner in Sin City and you can find anything."
Filming techniques
The Sin City movie employed the use of the Sony HDC-950 high-definition digital camera, having the actors play 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. While the use of a green screen isn't noteworthy, the use of high-definition digital cameras is. The combination of these two techniques makes Sin City 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.
Differences from the comics
Rodriguez has stated that he does not consider this movie to be an adaptation but a direct "translation." However, there are some notable minor changes from the comic books.
- Marv is holding a lighter before he bursts out of the hotel room at the beginning of The Hard Goodbye. In the book, it was a bottle of pills.
- The Customer in the prologue scene is wearing a red dress. In the book she is not. This is only notable because she can easily be mistaken for another Sin City character: Mary, the title character from The Babe Wore Red, who wears that exact same outfit.
- Manute is torturing Gail in The Big Fat Kill. In the book, it was a character named Davis who was a master of torture.
- Gail and Dwight kiss at the end of The Big Fat Kill. The book merely ends with a shot of the ambush.
- Bob picks up Hartigan from prison in That Yellow Bastard. In the book it was another police officer Hartigan once knew, Mort.
- Hartigan steals the spark plugs from Roark's car after he knocks out Klump and Schlubb in That Yellow Bastard. In the movie, he never does.
- The epilogue is not featured in any of the comic books, but was added to bring the film full circle.
There are also other changes from the books, such as new and old dialogue trimming, new colorized objects, new viewing angles, and the removal of some nudity (Jessica Alba declined to dance topless as Nancy does in the graphic novels), slightly edited violence and scenes missing (although the extended cut has more scenes from the books). Rodriguez, in his DVD commentary, explains most of these changes were required due to the reality of shooting a live-action film.
Trivia
- Following Rodriguez's scoring of Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol. 2 for $1, Quentin Tarantino directed a scene of Sin City for $1. Tarantino had previously advocated film over the digital cameras used by Rodriguez, but was interested to get to work with them. The scene in question is in The Big Fat Kill, where Dwight drives Det. Jack "Jackie Boy" Rafferty to the "pits". Tarantino wanted to use a real car for the scene but was unable to get the angles he wanted. Rodriguez convinced him to film on a partial set of the automobile interior, constructing the car's roof and sides using CGI, which ultimately resulted in Tarantino getting the shots he desired.
- The titles of the three main vignettes are all used as dialogue within those stories.
- Frank Miller appears in The Hard Goodbye as a priest shot by Marv.
- Among actors who were considered for parts were Michael Douglas, Steve Buscemi, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Walken and Kate Bosworth. Leonardo DiCaprio was offered the part of Junior (pre-The Yellow Bastard) but turned it down. Douglas was offered the role of Hartigan, Buscemi was offered the part of Junior when he became the Yellow Bastard, and Dafoe and Walken were both offered the role of Senator Roark. Bosworth was the first choice for Gail. Johnny Depp was attached to the project as well in a segment based on the most recent full-length graphic novel in the series, "Hell and Back", but due to budget concerns with the film, the segment was dropped. It is now to be the main focus of the third film.
- The swords used by Devon Aoki in this film are the same ones used by some of the Crazy 88s in Kill Bill.
- Only three sets were built for the movie: the interior of Kadie's Bar, Shellie's apartment and the hospital in the epilogue.
- Both Josh Hartnett and Elijah Wood appeared in a previous film directed by Rodriguez, The Faculty.
- An argument about the movie is alleged to have inspired a male cinema patron in Bathurst, Australia to bite the tip off another man's nose. The two men, who were not known to each other, began arguing after a screening of the movie on July 17, 2005. The man's nose was restored by surgery and police were said to be searching for his attacker [1].
- The modified Beretta 93R pistol used by RoboCop makes a cameo during That Yellow Bastard.
- A Wilhelm Scream was used, when Marv throws a police officer out of the stolen cop car.
- At the film's premiere at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas, Rodriguez placed microphones throughout the audience to record an "Audience-reaction" track for the special edition of the DVD.
- Within the graphic novels, The Yellow Bastard drives a rare late-1930s Bugatti[2] (only three of which were ever produced); hiring this car proved too expensive for the film production, thus an American substitute car was employed.
- During "The Hard Goodbye" when the newspaper is flashed with Marv's picture ("Cold Blooded Murderer in Jail"), if you pause the movie and read the "articles", you'll find the screenplay from the beginning of the movie cleverly used as the actual text.
- The taglines for the film were all quotes from the film and graphic novels.
- According to Rodriguez in the DVD featurette "15 Minute Flick School", the segment "The Customer is Always Right" was the first part of the movie to be filmed, and was shot as a test to see if the green screen production techniques were effective. Rodriguez then used this footage to "sell" others into supporting the film.
Cast
(Organized by the story they primarily appear in)
- Josh Hartnett — The Salesman (known in the screenplay as "The Man")
- Marley Shelton — The Customer
- Alexis Bledel — Becky (epilogue sequence added for the film)
- Mickey Rourke — Marv
- Jaime King — Goldie/Wendy
- Carla Gugino — Lucille
- Elijah Wood — Kevin
- Rutger Hauer — Cardinal Patrick Henry Roark
- Jason Douglas — Hitman
- Clive Owen — Dwight McCarthy
- Benicio Del Toro — Det. Lt. Jack "Jackie Boy" Rafferty
- Rosario Dawson — Gail
- Michael Clarke Duncan — Manute
- Alexis Bledel — Becky
- Devon Aoki — Miho
- Brittany Murphy — Shellie
- Patricia Vonne — Dallas
- Bruce Willis — Det. John Hartigan
- Jessica Alba — Nancy Callahan (19 years old)
- Nick Stahl — Roark Jr./Yellow Bastard
- Powers Boothe — Senator Roark
- Michael Madsen — Det. Bob
- Carla Gugino — Lucille (extended/reedited version only)
DVD
- Frank Miller's Sin City (Original theatrical)
In a rare move, Robert Rodriguez put out a statement a week prior to the first DVD release to assure fans that a more detailed release of the film was to come and the first release was "bare bones" and was being released "because of piracy and stuff like that." This statement didn't curb sales for the disc as it made $9.84 million in sales its first week (according to Home Media Retailing) and topped sales for all DVDs for its first two weeks of release.
- Frank Miller's Sin City (Recut & Extended Edition)
- Released: December 13 2005
- Number of discs: 2
- Run Time: 147 minutes
- DVD Features:
- Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (DTS 5.1)
- Commentary by: Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller (Unknown Format)
- Commentary by: Robert Rodriguez & Quentin Tarantino (Unknown Format)
- Commentary by: Austin premiere audience reaction (Unknown Format)
- Recut and extended theatrical release - separated into four stories
- Original theatrical release including:
- All-new feature commentary with Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller
- All-new feature commentary with Robert Rodriguez & Quentin Tarantino
- All-new feature commentary of Austin premiere audience reaction
- Exclusive never-before-seen extras:
- 15-minute film school with Robert Rodriguez
- The movie in high-speed green screen
- The Long Take: 17 uninterrupted minutes of Tarantino's segment
- Sin City Night at Antones -- filmmakers, cast and crew party
- 10-minute cooking school with Robert Rodriguez
- Bloopers
- Teaser & theatrical trailers
- A Hard Top With a Decent Engine: The cars of Sin City
- Making the Monsters: Special effects make-up
- Trench Coats & Fishnets: The costumes of Sin City
- Booze, Broads & Guns: The props of Sin City
- How it Went Down: Convincing Frank Miller to make the film
- Giving the Characters Life: Casting the film
- Special guest director: Quentin Tarantino
- Sin-Chroni-City interactive game
Three versions of the film were included in the 2-disc extended edition: the original theatrical release, a reedited version that divided the four major segments of the film into four separate short films (with additional footage added), and a "green screen" version that showed the film as originally shot, before the addition of special effects. This last version is presented in high-speed so this version of the film actually only runs about 10 minutes. Not all editions of the extended DVD include the blooper reel.
Sequels
Rodriguez has said he plans to film all of Miller's stories at some point and has expressed a desire to begin filming two sequels back-to-back starting early 2006 for double release sometime in TBA 2007 and Summer 2008. Plans to include the Sin City story Hell and Back[3] in the first film (with Johnny Depp in the lead role as Wallace) were abandoned before production began and will most likely be filmed for one of the sequels. Rodriguez has confirmed that the next film will be an adaptation of the story A Dame to Kill For, intertwined with a new story (or possibly multiple stories) that Miller wrote exclusively for the movie.
Sin City 2 is currently in the pre-production stage, and Sin City 3: Hell and Back is currently in development stages. Miller has stated that if he has his way, there will be five Sin City movies. 1
See also
External links
- Official Sin City website
- Sin City at IMDb
- Template:Shh
- Sin City Trailer 1 (14.5 MB, Quicktime)
- Sin City Trailer 2 (27.4 MB, Quicktime)
- Comic-Con Footage (23.3 MB, Quicktime)
- Excerpts and links to 180+ film critics' reviews
- A list of differences between the books and the movie
- Comic book-to-film visual comparisons
- An extensive interview with Miller and Rodriguez (59:39 minutes, click "Extended Audio")
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