Inappropriate Content: Sin City

I just saw SIN CITY, and out of a crowd of about a hundred people, there were exactly two of us that got it. Myself, and one other. A man, I think, though I never saw him or heard him speak: I only know his laugh, from every time the film reached new heights in it's brilliant, painful caricature of the brutal, violent, mindless American Code of Masculinity. That happened a lot, and only the two of us laughed, not another soul in the half-packed theater. A third or so were stunned into silence by the pure lust of the film: for women, yes, but bloodlust, too. These, I assume, were the third who don't realize that the American Man is, maybe by nature and maybe by nurture—we've no time for that debate here—he is, in fact, obsessed with sex and violence. The other two-thirds, I fear, prove the truth in that, with their whispered, awed “God-damn!”s at each particularly violent moment, and their appreciative silence at each increasingly sexy woman. It's an improvement, I suppose, that sexy women are now, usually, able to hold their own in a fight, and often heavily armed to boot. But still—still!—the only woman who isn't, in the end, a Damsel in Distress, is the “dyke parole officer,” who lives a life that is her own, and not dependant on any man, and, of course, violently short.

But she was not a victim of homophobia: a lead sandwich is the natural diet in Basin City (with the “B” and “A” scorched off the street signs), and every single male character, save two, finds himself at the business end of a Baretta, or sharp steel, or, for the real baddies, something much, much worse. Even my thoroughly desensitized mind was at one point brought up short by the endless torrents of blood that flow, not, usually, red, but white or even yellow-green. Torrents, you see, are absolutely necessary, for this is a tale not just of violence, but of revenge, and revenge, be it in a Tarantino film, or a Shakespearian tragedy, or even real life (hi there, Sharon) does not easily stop or often show mercy.

Tarantino, incidentally, is credited as a “Special Guest Director,” but I couldn't tell which of the four-and-a-half marginally intersecting storylines (protagonists have life spans as short as everyone else) was the work of Quentin. Both Tarantino and the credited Director, Robert Rodriguez, could create the splendid visual feel in every frame of the film; both are masters of dark, macho Revenge Movies (and much imitated); most importantly, they stay so close to the original SIN CITY comic books that it's possible they don't even know SIN CITY is not a macho Revenge Movie, but a comedy. At least, I hope it is: if not, the orginial author, Frank Miller, who Rodriguez credits as co-director, has serious problems.

As I said, only two of us in the audience knew that we were watching a comedy, but it was good to have someone else to laugh with as things got increasingly hilarious. The film's directors and 98% of the audience might not realize it, but SIN CITY is a comic masterpiece, a true gem, a dissection of all things manly better even than Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. For example, the homophobia. As I also said, the dyke is just as good as the men, but there is one male character who doesn't seem quite hetero. Maybe that's just because Elijah Wood isn't quite as butch as Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, or Benecio Del Toro, and because his character's fighting style is the distinctly feminine “silent-but-deadly” manner shared with one of the definately female “warrior-hookers” from storyline #3. And of course he likes to scratch people's eyes out with his extremely well-manicured nailes.

Of course orientation is never explicitly mentioned. But unlike other films, such as the aggressively suck-tastic Constantine, which was content to simply make it's not-quite-hetero character Satan and leave it at that, SIN CITY gives us a not-quite-hetero character who not only has an ambiguous tie to a man of the cloth; not only was at one time a troubled young Catholic altar boy; not only hates women so much he's compelled to murder hookers; he also eats his victims and mounts their heads like some colonial-England big-game hunter would a lion. I suppose we should be grateful he can kick serious ass, even if he does look, well, gay, when he does it.

By the time the film closed up, with the subtle tie-in of each storyline that reminds us of every cheap Pulp Fiction rip off, me and my friend, whoever he was, could hardly breathe for laughter, and everyone else who didn’t look like they wanted to throw up seemed to have had a good time. So there you have it: SIN CITY—comic masterpiece, or half-baked blood-fest; either way, remember, it's all just questionably tasteful fun.