Sin City (2005) review.
The Robert Rodriguez adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City comics is often praised for its stylistic bravado, but reading the original strips next to the 2005 live action version shows how much nuance is lost in translation. The comics are over-the-top, noir-flavored, and every bit as cartoonish and violent as the most gruesome grindhouse horror film or madcap Warner Brothers short—but also deeply human and tied to the medium in ways the film flattens.
Take Marv. In the comics, he’s not just a hulking brute—he’s a manchild. When we see him visiting home, his room is still set up like a little boy’s, with an airplane hanging from the ceiling and toys strewn about. These details are cut from the film but are crucial to understanding Marv's psychology.
Dialogue also clarifies his arrested development. In the film, Marv narrates that, “Lucille’s a dyke, though god knows why, with a body like that she could have any man she wants,” but in the comics, this is expanded to him outright saying this to her, and then being genuinely surprised when she’s offended. He never brings it up again. This reveals Marv isn’t homophobic—he just doesn’t understand social norms any more than a child would.
In the film, Marv is implied to be a virgin until Goldie sleeps with him. In both the film and the comic, he says that his face prevents him from even "buying a woman" but the more detailed psychological portrait that Frank Miller has time to paint in his chosen medium clarifies that it’s Marv's arrested development, not his looks, that prevent him from forming intimate relationships.
Marv is acutely aware of his limitations: he’s mentally disabled, yet self-aware enough to recognize those limits and work within them. This makes him both innocent and dangerous. Dwight compares Marv to a barbarian, but that's only half the story. Marv is a fusion of archetypes—on one hand, Conan the Barbarian, the embodiment of brute strength and relentless will; on the other, Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a childish fool whose naïveté occasionally gives way to odd flashes of insight. By combining the epic hero with the cartoon simpleton, Miller creates a character who is at once mythic, absurd, and deeply human. That paradox is what makes Marv unforgettable.
Plot and character moments are also cut or diluted. In the comic, Hartigan’s wife offers to believe he didn’t molest Nancy, even offering support and help when she begins to suspect it is true. Hartigan says nothing, not even to her, because Senator Roark has threatened to kill Nancy if he doesn’t take the fall for Roark Junior’s—aka, the Yellow Bastard's—crimes. This crucial scene is omitted in the film, in favor of a guest-directed scene from Quentin Tarantino, which adds little to The Big Fat Kill, the weakest story in both the early comics and this adaptation.
Dialogue works differently in animation or comics. Cartoonishly erudite henchmen, references to “bum tickers,” and over-the-top noir phrasing feel perfectly natural in a Looney Tunes short or EC comic book story, but can come across as silly or overwrought in live-action. Miller’s dialogue is part of the medium-specific charm.
Visually, the comics’ use of colour is deliberate. Early storylines are entirely black-and-white, and when colour does eventually pop up in later volumes, it serves a specific purpose in what is otherwise a sea of monochrome. For example, in That Yellow Bastard, the titular antagonist is painted yellow to emphasize his grotesque parody of The Yellow Kid, one of the earliest American comic-strip characters, and the yellow pops to inspire revulsion.
While Miller never explicitly frames it as parody, the grotesque transformation of a classic cartoon icon into a child-killing monster prefigures today’s wave of public-domain slashers, from Steamboat Willie: The Mouse Trap (2024) to Popeye: Shiver Me Timbers (2025). By recasting a familiar childhood favorite as a horror figure—and grounding this reimagining in the very medium the Yellow Kid originates from—Miller achieved a resonance that cheap live-action cash-ins on newly public-domain animated characters cannot hope to match. His disciplined use of yellow—and only yellow—to define that character underscores the point with striking precision.
The film, by contrast, spreads colour throughout via selective greenscreens and CGI. It’s a novelty—turning live action into a “cartoon noir”—but it often feels gimmicky and dilutes the impact of Miller’s very specific colour keys. The high-contrast, often line-free shadows on white paper represent career-best work on the part of Frank Miller, and arguably some of the finest black-and-white comic art ever done period.
In short: the comics layer character, humor, and grotesque satire in ways the film flattens. Marv’s childlike intelligence, endearing innocence, and vulnerability are lost. Hartigan’s moral stakes are simplified. Colour and dialogue lose subtlety when translated to live action.
Sin City the movie is fun, visually striking, and a novel experiment in cinematic comic adaptation. But it misses the innovation and human depth that make the original comics enduringly remarkable.
