Taglines: You’re gonna love this, baby.
Sin City is infested with criminals, crooked cops and sexy dames, some searching for vengeance, some for redemption and others, both. The film incorporates storylines from three of Miller’s graphic novels including ‘Sin City,’ which launched the long-running, critically acclaimed series, as well as ‘That Yellow Bastard’ and ‘The Big Fat Kill.’ Where Hartigan, a cop with a bum ticker and a vow to protect stripper Nancy. Marv, the outcast misanthrope, is on a mission to avenge the death of his one true love, Goldie; there’s also Dwight, the clandestine love of Shelley who spends his nights defending Gail and her Old Towne girls from Jackie Boy, a dirty cop with a penchant for violence.
Sin City stars Bruce Willis as Hartigan, a cop with a bum ticker and a vow to protect stripper Nancy; Mickey Rourke as Marv, the outcast misanthrope on a mission to avenge the death of his one true love, Goldie, and Clive Owen as Dwight, the clandestine love of Shelley, who spends his nights defending Gail and her Old Towne girls from Jackie Boy, a dirty cop with a penchant for violence.
Welcome to Sin City. This town beckons to the tough, the corrupt, the brokenhearted. Some call it dark. Hard-boiled. Then there are those who call it home. Crooked cops. Sexy dames. Desperate vigilantes. Some are seeking revenge. Others lust after redemption. And then there are those hoping for a little of both. A universe of unlikely and reluctant heroes still trying to do the right thing in a city that refuses to care.
Their stories — shocking, suspenseful and searing — come to the fore in a new motion picture from co-directors Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez, and special guest director Quentin Tarantino. With verve and invention, Miller and Rodriguez plucked the stories of Sin City right off the comic book page.
Sin City (also known as Frank Miller’s Sin City) is a 2005 American neo-noir crime anthology film written, produced, and directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller. It is based on Miller’s graphic novel of the same name.
Much of the film is based on the first, third, and fourth books in Miller’s original comic series. The Hard Goodbye is about a man who embarks on a brutal rampage in search of his one-time sweetheart’s killer, killing anyone, even the police, that gets in his way of finding and killing her murderer. The Big Fat Kill focuses on an everyman getting caught in a street war between a group of prostitutes and a group of mercenaries, the police and the mob. That Yellow Bastard follows an aging police officer who protects a young woman from a grotesquely disfigured serial killer. The intro and outro of the film are based on the short story “The Customer is Always Right” which is collected in Booze, Broads & Bullets, the sixth book in the comic series.
The film stars an ensemble cast led by Jessica Alba, Benicio del Toro, Brittany Murphy, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, and Elijah Wood, and featuring Alexis Bledel, Michael Clarke Duncan, Rosario Dawson, Carla Gugino, Rutger Hauer, Jaime King, Michael Madsen, Nick Stahl, and Makenzie Vega among others.
Sin City opened to wide critical and commercial success, gathering particular recognition for the film’s unique color processing which rendered most of the film in black and white while retaining or adding color for selected objects. The film was screened at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival in competition and won the Technical Grand Prize for the film’s “visual shaping”.
Sin City grossed $29.1 million on its opening weekend, defeating fellow opener Beauty Shop by more than twice its opening take. The film saw a sharp decline in its second weekend, dropping over fifty percent. Ultimately, the film ended its North American run with a gross of $74.1 million against its $40 million negative cost. Overseas, the film grossed $84.6 million, for a worldwide total from theater receipts of $158.7 million.
Three Stories, Two Directors, One Vision
Once Miller was hooked by the project, Rodriguez wanted him to be at the center of it. “Frank’s presence on the set was invaluable to insure an authentic translation of his books. But I didn’t just want him there as a producer or a comic creator. I wanted him there as a co-director, so that actors and crew would listen to what he had to say and treat him with respect.” Rodriguez decided they would share directing duties – although this, too, would demand sacrifices. In order to avoid violating union rules that say there can only be one director per picture, Rodriguez had no choice but to drop out of the Director’s Guild of America to assure Miller his credit.
Rodriguez: “I didn’t realize at the time that it was against Director Guild rules to have 2 directors, but I was already convinced that this was the way to go to insure the best movie. Frank’s the only person who’s ever really been to Sin City. He knows everything about the characters and this world. I also felt he’d already been directing all these years. It’s only that he’s been using a pen and paper instead of a camera, actors and lighting. Frank is a natural visual storyteller – and he jumped in at the highest possible technological level and picked it up so fast it was remarkable.”
“As for quitting the DGA, it was just what had to be done. They didn’t want me, an established director, teaming up with a first time director. That isn’t allowed according to their rule book (which is as thick as the phone book, by the way.) We were moving forward in such a positive way, and everyone involved could feel this was a special project, that when the Guild came knocking on our door to shut us down a week before production, I couldn’t let anything stop us.
This project just felt too right. Frank was not a first time director in my mind. If you read his books, you see that they are the best written, photographed, acted, edited and directed movies never seen on the big screen. To me he’s been directing all along, he’s just been doing it on paper. Like a movie, a comic is visual storytelling, and Frank has proven himself in that arena. The Guild still said no. So I resigned in order for us to make the movie the right way. Sometimes you have to break the rules to do something different.”
With that decided, Miller was pleased to still be in control of his creative baby. And now he believes SIN CITY may well change the way comic book stories are approached by filmmakers in the future.
Miller: “The whole production has been astounding to me. SIN CITY is going to be far and away the most faithful translation of a comic to film ever seen. What we found is that all those things filmmakers always said couldn’t translate from comics – the particular kind of dialogue, the fast jump cuts – well, we could make them all happen in a new way. I think comic fans and movies fans are going to be quite surprised by how different SIN CITY is from what has come before. There’s no trumped-up realism here – it’s more like a pure fever dream.”
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Sin City (2005)
Directed by: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Clive Owen, Jaime King, Rosario Dawson, Brittany Murphy, Alexis Bledel, Jessica Alba, Devon Aoki, Rosario Dawson, Carla Gugino, Katherine Willis
Screenplay by: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller
Cinematography by: Robert Rodriguez
Film Editing by: Robert Rodriguez
Set Decoration by: David Hack, Jeanette Scott
Art Direction by: Steve Joyner, Jeanette Scott
Music by: John Debney, Graeme Revell, Robert Rodriguez
MPAA Rating: R for sustained strong stylized violence, nudity and sexual content.
Distributed by: Dimension Films
Release Date: April 1, 2005
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