"Sin City": Bad guys never looked so good

Until now, movies based on comic books or graphic novels have only approximated the kinetic style of comics while remaining rooted in the familiar conventions of film. Even the acclaimed "Spider-Man" blockbusters owe more to director Sam Raimi than to comics creator Stan Lee.

"Frank Miller's Sin City" sets a new and higher standard.

Robert Rodriguez recruited Frank Miller as co-director of this visually exacting translation of Miller's "Sin City" graphic novels. Rodriguez sacrificed membership in the Directors Guild of America (which allows only established directorial teams like the Coen and Wachowski brothers) to ensure that Miller's vision would remain meticulously intact. As a result, Miller's many fans are likely to hail this as a masterpiece. Rarely has an artist in one medium been so loyally served by another.

A self-taught wizard with three "Spy Kids" hits to his credit, Rodriguez turned his Austin, Texas-based mini-studio into a digital conduit for Miller's imagination. In this limitless realm, physical laws of motion and gravity no longer apply, and comics come to life.

The hard-boiled, mostly black-and-white underworld of Miller's pulp-fictional Basin City is occasionally punctuated by vivid jolts of color. Rodriguez and Miller honor the style and syntax of comics as gleaned from the medium's ongoing evolution: Brutish thugs punch with sudden, bone-shattering impact (you can almost read "Ker-raccckkk!!" on screen); blood spatters with artful precision; rain falls in horizontal streaks; cars careen exactly the way comic-book cars are supposed to. From racy costumes to elaborate Dick Tracy-style makeup design, everything is intensely stylized, and it's all deliriously perfect.

Rodriguez filmed a neo-noir prologue (featuring Josh Hartnett) to sell Miller on his directorial intentions. This led to a combination of three of Miller's original stories ("The Hard Goodbye," "The Big Fat Kill" and "That Yellow Bastard") in a raw, ultra-violent anthology rooted in the legacies of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane. But old-school guns and scantily clad femmes fatale aren't Miller's only inspiration; severed heads, martial arts and sociopathic cannibals also factor into his cynical rogue's gallery of martyred antiheroes and unredeemable villains.

Best of all is Marv (Mickey Rourke, under perfectly chiseled latex), a nearly-invincible hulk who avenges the murder of an angelic prostitute in the film's fastest, funniest segment. His story is loosely connected to those of grizzled cop Hartigan (Bruce Willis), who's tracking a corrupt politician (Powers Boothe) and his mutated pedophile son (Nick Stahl) while searching for an exotic dancer (Jessica Alba) he'd rescued years before, and Dwight (Clive Owen), an ex-con who joins forces with the heavily armed hookers of Old Town (led by the breathtakingly lethal Rosario Dawson) when a delicate truce is violated by a wretched cop (Benicio Del Toro).

The good guys are bad, and the bad guys are utterly evil: Elijah Wood, Rutger Hauer, Michael Clark Duncan and Michael Madsen inhabit vividly twisted roles that are variously scary, hilarious and freakishly extreme.

But then, nothing in "Sin City" is subtle. The gonzo sensibility of "Sin City" — including an Owen/Del Toro driving scene directed by Quentin Tarantino — is self-assured and defiantly in-your-face. Parents of young, eager "Sin City" fans be warned: This is R-rated filmmaking on the raw, cutting edge, directly comparable to an M-rated video game.

That's no crime, of course, but while the all-star cast is in fine form, Rodriguez and Miller are obviously catering to a juvenile mindset, and they're not entirely successful in weaving a satisfying yarn from three separate threads. "Sin City" is a triumph of technique that's likely to have a bludgeoning effect on anyone who prefers more potent emotional substance.

If you're on the "Sin City" wavelength, however, you'll get a jolt of exhilaration.

Jeff Shannon: j.sh@verizon.net