Seeing Sin City made me decide, after months of defying Mormon cultural standards of cleancutedness, to get my hair chopped.

WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILERS!

There. Got that out of the way.

I rarely see movies in the theater–enough money goes into tickets these days (esp. when we take the whole family) that the potential excursion has to be judged for its risks, like any investment. Being risk-adverse, I tend to check my DVDs out from the library, leaving me in the cinematic bronze age, but the fines I rack up over 2-3 months are still cheaper than the price of one movie entrance. (Once again, rationalizing my library fines…)

Anyhow, I saw Sin City for three reasons: 1) a recommendation from my kid brother (who is a Jedi in alternative geek culturedom); 2) a 4-star review from Roger Ebert, whose movie tastes strongly match my own (fairly artsy-critical in most areas, but a big kid when it comes to science fiction and comic-based movies); and, 3) standing and reading (in Japanese, there is a word for this: tachiyomi. The Eskimos have dozens of words for snow, and the Japanese have names for doing things in places with lots of people in them?) Frank Miller’s first Sin City graphic novel . I was mesmerized by the harsh lighting of each panel, and completely absorbed and sympathetic to the protagonist, despite his deformed face, gleeful torture sprees, and effortlessness at taking human life. I wanted to see how Rodriguez and Miller executed this on the big screen.

The movie consists of three or four loosely connected stories. Hardigan (Bruce Willis’ character), for all of his hard-boiledness, is actually quite noble, and is the only protagonist who could pass in our world as sane and good (so it makes sense that he does eight years of hard time in the world of Sin City). You sympathize with the others partly because they act for noble causes (love, protecting the weaker, etc.), but I think mostly because each of these guys are standing all but alone against the pervasive and overwhelming evil of the system–the corrupt politicians, crime bosses, police chiefs and pernicious priests who control the goons, protect the perverse, and generally dominate the dark, dark world of Sin City.

The other reason is style. The directors have tapped into aura of the Film Noir protagonists. Where you and I would run screaming at the first sign of lunatic danger, these guys keep their cool. Rourke’s character (Marv) to the hitman shoving the gun in his back: “That there is one damn fine coat you’re wearing,” and at his own execution: “Would you hurry it up? I haven’t got all day.”

In the middle of all of this is a woman-beating, slimeball of a corrupt cop played by Benecio del Toro. And he has my hair! (Albeit a greasier version) Miller and Rodriguez, masters of presentation and audience manipulation, want to show the world that this guy is a total loser, (the protagonist in this story, Dwight, forcefully scrubs the toilet bowl with Del Toro’s head) and they put my wavy locks on him! So, after months of wavering, I had Jana cut my hair.

I think it looks a bit like Dwight’s.