A new level of neo-noir

Writer and artist Frank Miller's original seven-part graphic novel "Sin City" shook the comic-loving throngs to its collective knees when it was gradually released throughout the 1990's, and filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, a huge Miller fan himself, took notice. He'd wanted to make the stories into a film (or films) for some time, but the technology to make them accurately resemble the original works simply wasn't available until recently. Once it was, \nRodriguez went to work.\nWorking alongside the author and artist of the books himself, as well as longtime pal and \noccasional collaborator Quentin Tarantino, Rodriguez fashioned three of the original seven "Sin City" stories ("The Hard Goodbye," "The Big Fat Kill," and "The Yellow Bastard") into the most accurate and faithful comic-to-film adaptation imaginable, taking few if any artistic liberties with the material, aside from the fact that the film is in motion and not on the page. The result is one gut-buster of a movie, moving along at a frantic pace and, as with all its characters, it takes no prisoners.\nAs a visual document alone, "Sin City" is a wonder to behold. Gritty black and white is predominant, with only splashes of color here and there meant for emotional or visceral effect. Select characters' eyes show up in vibrant tints while the rest of their bodies remain faded. Vehicles adopt an otherworldly feel, and the film's prevalent brutal violence takes on an almost Looney Tune tone, which benefits and detracts from the vignettes in equal amounts.\nMiller's graphic novels are rooted deeply in classic film noir and hard-boiled crime fiction at its pulpiest, and the dialogue and acting follow suit. The male actors (Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro) paint their lines on a canvas with the superficial introspection and subtle ferocity of Fred MacMurray in "Double Indemnity," while the female leads (Jessica Alba, Jamie King, Brittany Murphy, Rosario Dawson) purr and pout like so many Claire Trevors. The dialogue is rather frequently stilted, this being the film's lone Achilles' heel, but all actors (with the possible exception of Dawson and a brief appearance by Michael Clarke Duncan) manage to rise above the level of camp to truly inhabit and seemingly revel in their roles.\nThere are almost no special features on this disc aside from a scrawny making-of featurette, but the abundance of features on small-screen editions of all of Rodriguez's other films (even "Spy Kids 3") assure that a beefed-up special edition can't be too far away, most likely dropping around the same time as Tarantino's "The Whole Bloody Affair" edition of "Kill Bill" this winter.\n"Sin City" will thrill fans of the original graphic novels with its faithfulness, fans of film noir with its tone and visual style, and fans of "Pulp Fiction" with its non-linear, narrative-refracting structure. Rodriguez has already announced a sequel set for next year, assuring Frank Miller's "Sin City" will remain in the pop-cinema forefront for some time to come.