Directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez
Cast: Jessica Alba, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Clarke Duncan,
Josh Hartnett, Rutger Hauer, Michael Madsen, Brittany Murphy,
Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Elijah Wood

Review by Rada Djurica

There are a million stories in the naked city and seemingly just as many in Sin City, a freak show of sex, violence and depravity. The film is based on the comic book series by Frank Miller, who directed the film with Robert Rodriquez. The screen adaptation follows the ups and downs of rough guys and doll-like women from the city's underground depths and the shelves of pulp fiction.

The film begins with a beautiful image of a woman staring into the night, dressed in blood-splattered clothing. To highlight the connection to comic books and pulp fiction, red is the only color in a landscape beside white, black and silvery gray. The lengthy shot also gives the narrator time to lurk on her. Soon, a man offers the woman a cigarette and so the action begins. With a few short sentences and a violent act, the filmmakers emphasize their focus on death and desire, the underlying brutality of their world.

In Sin City's shadowland, women are slaves to the fetishistic fashions of comic strip heroines. Dressed in push-up bras, they all look like working girls. As in Pulp Fiction, which obviously influences its structure, Sin City turns on three tales from Miller's original graphic novels. The first follows a detective, John Hartigan (Bruce Willis), who meets Nick Stahl's character, Roark Jr., and an 11-year-old girl who grows up to become an exotic dancer. Little girls apparently do not enjoy career choices in Sin City. Almost all the women are prostitutes, members of a very pissed-off sisterhood, bound together by greed and numerous lethal weapons.

That sisterhood features most heavily in the story centered on bad boy Dwight (Clive Owen). Dwight's story is a tale of jealousy and misidentification. He just crashes and burns, sacrificed for a blood deal.

The most developed story focuses on Marv, played by Mickey Rourke. Marv is at once the classic cartoon underdog and a pulp superman, a lonely guy at heart, an avenger of women, a knight in shining black.

The film achieves its goals. Sufficient, sophisticated and clear, it is a violent, film with a cynical attitude in both action and situation.