by Dave Franklin

Created on: January 04, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

There has been a flood of comic book adaptations for the big screen in recent years. They have always been around but with Blade, Spiderman, Daredevil and its spin offs and the dark revisits to Batman's Gotham City to name the more obvious ones. It was inevitable that someone was going to take the dark sleazy world of Frank Millers Sin City and offer that up for movie audience. Thankfully it was the creator himself that drove the project and the result of a comic book mind behind it has created not only a great film but also something very different. Whereas the films that I have mentioned above are, as I said, adaptations, this is something more. Its not a simple adaptation, it's a comic book brought to life, the way it is filmed, the use of false colours, the framing and stark contrasts, all are comic book techniques and to see them used on the screen makes for a very different looking film.

The film is a collection of stories that in a pulp fiction style (Tarrantino is credited as a guest producer alongside Miller and Robert Rodriguez) references each other but stand alone from each other. They are stories of cops and killers, psychopaths and prostitutes and the film seems to stand with one foot in the gumshoe detective world of Humphrey Bogart and the other in some dark sleazy fantasy akin to Blade Runner or the original Mad Max film. From the former genre it revels in a clich tongue in cheek self narration and punchy prose and from the later a dark apocalyptic view of the world to come. The stories themselves are not even the main point of the film and whilst the plots are nothing to write home about, that doesn't even detract from the film. It's all about style and Sin City delivers that in spades.

The first obvious thing you notice about the film is that it is shot in black and white, but like everything about this film has its own take on that. Whilst 99% of the film makes the most of the dramatic contrasts that only black and white can offer it uses colour highlights to add to the effect. Blood is red, eyes are dayglo' and neon lights backlight the characters. It may have been a question of economics that had a bearing on the decision to film in black and white but it is an artistic decision that not only works but also actually makes the film what it is. Another thing that the media of comics contributes to the film is a discipline that is sometimes lost in movies. The graphic artist has limited room, there can be no indulgences in tangents and sidelines,

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