While technically just one part of Sin City, I consider it a stand alone movie, much like Frank Miller wrote it as a stand alone story within the Sin City universe.
Synopsis: Little is known about Marv prior to The Hard Goodbye. He considers himself a down-and-outer with no direction in life until he meets Goldie one night at Kadie’s Bar. They share a night of passion, and Marv wakes to find Goldie dead beside him in their bed. Police arrive too quickly to be coincidence and Marv breaks through them to get away.
He winds up at the apartment of Lucille, Marv’s parole officer. She knows about his history with police and knows that if arrested again, Marv will be imprisoned for life. She gives him some medicine, which keeps Marv from becoming confused, and he tells her that Goldie brought meaning to his life. He’s out for blood, and will stop at nothing until he learns the truth about Goldie’s death.
Word of Marv’s snooping gets out, and he’s soon taken by some low level thugs. Marv kills them after learning a little more about the hit, and continues up the food chain killing everyone he finds, including a priest. His actions lead him to Roark’s Farm, where he’s taken down by Kevin, who is caretaker of the farm. Marv wakes up in a basement cell with several women’s heads mounted on a wall, and Lucille who is missing her left hand. She tells Marv that Kevin is a cannibal, and ate the women whose heads are mounted as well as her hand. Marv also learns that Goldie was a prostitute.
Marv breaks out and tries to escape with Lucille, when a small S.W.A.T. team approaches the farm; they kill Lucille, and attempt to kill Marv. He fights back, and learns that Cardinal Roark is involved. Marv heads to Old Town to learn more about Goldie where he gets the attention of Wendy, another prostitute and Goldie’s twin sister. Marv is captured, tied up and beaten because Wendy is convinced Marv killed her sister. He explains that because of his looks, he could never get close enough to any of them to kill them, and that he’s been trying to find the truth behind Goldie’s death. Wendy believes him, and together, Marv and Wendy go back to the Farm. On the way, Wendy tells him that Goldie worked the clergy.
Marv fights and kills Kevin, and then storms the Cardinal’s home. Marv learns that Kevin went to the Cardinal for spiritual guidance because of his cannibalism, and the Cardinal ended up joining Kevin’s habits, killing prostitutes to serve their needs. Goldie found out, and was on the run when she found Marv at Kadie’s. He was to be her protector, but he failed. Marv kills the Cardinal, and is shot down by police. Marv survives, and is forced to sign a confession for killing Roark, Kevin, the prostitutes they ate…and Goldie.
Marv dies in the electric chair, content that he got Goldie’s killers.
Comments: I had the pleasure of seeing this in one of those restaurant style theatres, with the recliner chairs and full menus. It was my first time in a place like that, and I got there early enough to have an appetizer and a soda before the movie began. I mention all this because I had a bathroom emergency that couldn’t wait until the end of the movie. I had no idea how long the movie was, or how much was left, but I couldn’t hold it any longer and missed what ended up being the last five minutes. The good news is that The Hard Goodbye was the first full story in the film, and I saw it all.
I bought this movie on the 2-Disc Recut-Extended-Unrated version.
I hadn’t read any of the Sin City books before seeing the movie. I did know that Frank Miller’s creation was very popular, had a film noir feel, and was primarily black and white with some color thrown in from time to time.
In fact, the first full Sin City story I read came with the DVD - The Hard Goodbye. I was surprised how faithful Rodriguez was to the original work. My only disappointment was that there wasn’t more in the movie…until I played the second disc.
This DVD set has a lot of extras, which is the main reason I buy DVDs. Bells and Whistles. Love ‘em. Can’t get enough of ‘em.
The first disc’s extras allow me to watch The Hard Goodbye four different ways:
1) The original version with DTS 5.1 or Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound.
2) The original version with commentary by Rodriguez and Miller.
3) The original version with commentary by Rodriguez and Tarantino. And most cool…
4) The original version with an audio track recorded live in Austin, Texas.
The fourth version is the best, because you feel like you’re back in the theater. Not a lot of movies can pull this off, but it’s as good as The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The audience is that animated, and is a lot of fun to listen to.
The version on Disc 2 is still my favorite, because that features the extended cut of The Hard Goodbye. What does that mean? That means that the sequence in the graphic novel featuring Weevil, a Wolverine-esque character, appears in the film, with a Hugh Jackman-esque actor. I laughed out loud when I first saw that, and I know…I KNOW…that if this version appeared in theatres, the Austin crowd would have laughed too.
Why do I love The Hard Goodbye? Two words…Mickey Rourke. He won awards from four different events for this role and truly deserved them.
I wish they included “making-of” docubits for each story separately, but what they do include pertains to the whole movie. We do get to see Rourke in the chair getting his make-up put on, or at least starting to, and insight into how quickly some of the actors were cast.
This brings up a point. I’m not sure if this is how Rodriguez usually works, but there was a lot of editing done on this project because actors were cast at various times. Rourke was cast as Marv pretty quickly, but most of the characters he’s on screen with were cast after he finished. Elijah Wood, Rutger Hauer and Jessica Alba all came in later, which is really amazing to me. It’s one of those things where going into the movie knowing that information is the only time it shows. At least he had Jaime King and Carla Gugino to act with. Those scenes would have been very hard to pull off otherwise.
Adorkable Moment: It’s interesting that Miller makes his cameo in The Hard Goodbye. Not as a character that appears in all four stories, but as the priest that Marv kills in the church. Why that part? Why this story? Because The Hard Goodbye was the first Sin City story Miller created. In fact, this story was originally called Sin City. Miller changed the name later, probably right before the movie’s release.
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