The Tense, Trippy 'Sin City' Scene That's Covered in Quentin Tarantino's Fingerprints

October 02, 2024

The Big Picture

Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino collaborated on Sin City .
Tarantino's standout scene in Sin City featured his unique style and a postmodern twist.
Rodriguez and Tarantino's collaboration produced a harmonious final product, showcasing friendship and teamwork in filmmaking.

Filmmaking is an inherently collaborative process, and even films made by distinct auteurs are only successful if an entire team of artists is on the same page and locked into a singular vision. That by itself can be a near miraculous accomplishment, so imagine the potential headache of one auteur inviting another to play in his sandbox, as that could invite a clashing of minds that could derail a whole project. But mastermind Robert Rodriguez trusted his good friend Quentin Tarantino enough that, when in the middle of production on his masterpiece Sin City, he invited Quentin to direct an important scene in his pulp noir exercise. That scene would become the oddest highlight in a film packed with gonzo visual ideas and a baroque approach to an ancient genre, reinvigorating the tropes in a way nobody had seen before, courtesy of the bold prowess of Rodriguez and Tarantino.

Sin City

RCrimeActionThriller Release Date April 1, 2005 Director Frank Miller , Robert Rodriguez , Quentin Tarantino Cast Jessica Alba , Devon Aoki , Alexis Bledel , Powers Boothe , Cara D. Briggs , Jude Ciccolella Runtime 124 Main Genre Crime Writers Frank Miller Expand

What Is 'Sin City' About?

Sin City is a devoted adaptation of Frank Miller's iconic graphic novel series, tying a number of stories together that take place alongside each other in the titular Sin City. Using cutting edge green screen technology and Rodriguez' mastery of lighting and technical camerawork, Sin City entrenches the audience in a starkly drawn world of noble criminals and unrepentant scum, the strict binary of the black and white color scheme broken up by the fleeting flashes of sharp color, most prominently red. The film's guiding principle was perfectly matching Miller's visuals and putting them onto screen, but amplifying them with the kinetic rush that cinema can supply, embodying the ideal of "style is substance," where the plots are an excuse to explore the world.

In one particular storyline, Dwight (Clive Owen) seeks to protect his lover, Shellie (Brittany Murphy), from the threatening advances of her abusive ex-partner, Jackie Boy (Benicio del Toro). When Dwight tracks Jackie down and prevents Jackie from messing with a sex worker named Becky (Alexis Bledel), Jackie threatens Dwight with a gun, but then Jackie is murdered in self-defense by another sex worker named Miho (Devon Aoki). In order to keep the peace between the sex workers and the Mob who own the section of Sin City they operate in, Dwight must dispose of Jackie's body and cover-up any sign of trouble, which sets up the climactic scene in question.

Quentin Tarantino Directed the Entire "Dead Jackie" Scene

Dwight is driving his car out of Sin City to a tar wasteland, with Jackie's dead body slumped in the passenger seat next to him. Dwight is sweating bullets, praying that the cops won't catch up with him, and suddenly, Jackie's body wakes up and starts talking to him. With a gun barrel sticking out of his forehead and a deep gash smiling across his throat, Jackie croaks out every insecurity and anxiety that Dwight is thinking, with Del Toro contorting his voice to Tom Waits-level growls in one of the most eccentric and downright wacky performances of his illustrious career. Due to the deep neck wound, he can barely keep his head straight, and the way it bobbles and snaps up and down every time he moves adds an intensely macabre humor to his basic existence. The mismatch in Jackie's refusal to shut up and Dwight's refusal to engage becomes an unwilling dance, with Dwight preferring to monologue to himself about how screwed he is and planning his next move, even acknowledging that he knows he's just imagining Jackie talking to him. With a cop on their tail and Jackie using as many pop culture lingo phrases as he can think of to irritate Dwight, it's a moment of rare vulnerability for Dwight, with Owen channeling his inner Humphrey Bogart (fitting, since he'd later play Sam Spade).

With the film taking place entirely in a speeding car, it's primarily filmed with medium close-ups of Owen and del Toro, with occasional extreme close-ups of their faces and an exterior shot of the car going down the road. When Dwight or Jackie hold the floor with their dialogue, the camera will slowly zoom in on them, often to a point of flagrant discomfort, to the point that their faces are practically filling the entire screen. When Dwight gets his monologue about what to do, the camera roves around him at a crawl, both fixing you onto Dwight's perspective and priming the audience for when the cop will pull up next to the car. In moments of surprise and spikes of tension, the camera will do a whip zoom onto a point of interest that feels ripped out of exploitation films of the 1970s.

Strong primary colors of red, blue, green, and yellow splash across the characters' faces, totally unmotivated by the lighting in a way that takes the material out of the bleakness of pulp noir and into the kitsch of acid-influenced comic books a la Jack Kirby. All of these stylistic choices are a far cry from Rodriguez' approach to the material, which is much more panel-emulating static shots married with crazy camera movements and a relish for the motions of the characters. Everything in this one scene is a hallmark of Quentin Tarantino's style: the focus on making dialogue exchange feel "cinematic," (like the tavern scene in Inglorious Basterds), the casual use of pop culture references, criminals acting like ordinarily vulnerable people, and investing the tropes of classic storytelling with a postmodern twist that simultaneously pokes holes in and valorizes the fantasy of the genre.

Tarantino loves making whole scenes out of what would normally be cutting room floor material in any other movie, like the foot massage discussion in Pulp Fiction or most of the film discussions in Death Proof, and the Jackie Boy scene is Tarantino steroiding a transitional moment into a seminal expression of the film's soul. Plus, even though the whole scene is two men stuck in a car, Tarantino still included his love for unique gunplay, with Jackie's head hitting the dashboard and the gun barrel in his forehead getting shoved through his skull. Granted, he was already dead, but it makes for a punchy little button at the end of the scene, another staple of Tarantino's style of storytelling.

How Did Quentin Tarantino Get Involved With 'Sin City'?

Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have had a long history of helping each other out with their projects: they collaborated as directors on Four Rooms, Rodriguez got Tarantino to act in Desperado and write From Dusk Till Dawn, Tarantino had Rodriguez do the score for Kill Bill: Volume 2, etc. Therefore, it was not that abnormal when Rodriguez told Tarantino about Sin City and asked if he could direct one scene from the film, choosing that scene because he wanted a completely different tone for it. Rodriguez assured him that there was no pressure for him to do anything especially bizarre, and he attested that he "let [Tarantino] just direct the actors," with little to no interference.

But Tarantino was still nervous about the idea of venturing into his friend's world, so he storyboarded the entire scene out before arriving on set, which is something he claims he rarely does for his own movies. Tarantino spoke about what he loved most about doing that scene, most notably how a "strange kind of camaraderie starts to develop between the two of them that's funny," paired with how the "unflappable" Dwight starts to "little by little by little lose it." Frank Miller, who was on set for the production as a third co-director, said he was shocked at how "harmonious" the teamwork between Rodriguez and Tarantino wound up being, given how huge both of their egos were.

Quentin Tarantino’s Favorite John Wayne Western Influenced His Entire Career

The Oscar-winning filmmaker sure does love a hangout movie.

That harmony between two of the living embodiments of succeeding as rebels within the studio system is the secret sauce as to why this sequence works so well. Despite barely being involved in the production, Tarantino had such a sharp sense of what his partner-in-crime Rodriguez needed from him, while still sticking to his guns on what he knew he needed from himself. It produced a moment that perfectly fulfills the promise of what Sin City was supposed to be, a masterclass in embracing artifice to elevate material far past the potboiler potential it had on the page. Rodriguez himself pointed out that "people will know" that Tarantino directed that scene, and yet the seamlessness with which it fits while surrounded by a Rodriguez-directed film is remarkable. It shows that, for all of Tarantino's bluster about how much he knows about cinema, that hasn't gone so much to his head that he shuts out anyone else's insight. Sometimes the power of friendship really does pay off in a big way.

Sin City is available to watch on Pluto TV in the U.S.

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