I glanced at the other SC threads, but didn’t see anything about this.
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Bruce Willis’ character receives letters from Nancy, until he finally receives a finger. He then admits to the crime, gets released, and leads Yellow Guy to her. This leaves me with a few questions:
First, why would they let him go at all? Last I checked, prison’s not like time-out (you can’t just confess/repent and be free). I guess it could be argued that Yellow Guy used his influence to help get him out, but then why was the confession needed at all?
Next, they give the impression that YG’s been searching for Nancy (I’m guessing his father hid her from him to prevent him from proving Willis’ innocence), and needed Willis to lead him to her. Well, how the hell did Willis know where Nancy lived? She didn’t leave any clues in her letters, so it almost seems that she’s been living in the same apartment since she was a kid. If that were the case, then YG would have no problem finding her.
Finally, after going through all that trouble to locate his ‘prey’, YG just shoots at them wildly from his car. Doesn’t that seem a little out of character? I wouldn’t think he’d risk killing Nancy like that (might ruin the fun…)
I took it that the Yellow Bastard’s connections were responsible for freeing Willis, but they didn’t have so much authority they could just order him released without some pretense that the situation had been resolved. Willis might have been more cautious once released without going through the motions, too, and less able to control if he felt he had other options in life had he been outright acquitted. Now, why his confession would be justification for releasing him, I’m not quite sure.
I couldn’t figure that one out myself.
By this point, Nancy was “too old” for his normal preferences, so he might not have particularly cared if she were killed or otherwise rendered unsuitable for his activities.
First off, Yellow Guy is more properly called That Yellow Bastard (TYB). I thought I remembered that Hartigan was essentially in jail – and not prison – awaiting a trial, and the trial was indefinitely stalled while the prosecution looked for more evidence. Or, alternatively, he was imprisoned, but as long as he insisted on his innocence (and Nancy’s wholesomeness) then the parole board would not consider him rehabilitated. Once TYB gives him the finger, Hartigan gives up his fortress of solitude and sets the wheels in motion to get out (remember he was holding out so that Nancy’s reputation would remain intact). TYB, having set him up, is helping from the outside, so everything goes smoothly. Hartigan is paroled so he will lead them to her.
Presumably he knew how to find her based on something in her letters – this was not made clear in the movie and also bothered me, since TYB seemed to have read the letters and would have access to the same information.
It’s explained more in the comic, I think, but Goldie was investigating the missing girls–one of the main themes of the Old Town girls seems to be ‘take care of your own’. She apparently found out too much (she worked the clergy, so she would’ve been in a position to), so she had to die. I guess she didn’t tell anybody else what she knew so they wouldn’t be in danger.
As to how Hartigan got released, my take was that as long as Hartigan hadn’t confessed, the Callahan case was somehow still open and there was still some chance Roark Jr. was in trouble, so Sen. Roark made sure he got kept in prison until then.
That makes sense, though Sen. Roark made it pretty clear that he wanted Hartigan in jail forever. I would also think that he’d consider Hartigan to be a physical threat to Roark Jr. if he was let out.
I thought he got off on making her scream? It’s kind of hard to do that if she’s dead…
There were quite a few things that could have been more clear in the movie (what was Rourke Jr. doing at the farm anyways?), though I guess it would have made unbearably long. Hartigan’s ability to find Nancy is the only thing that I can’t think of ANY explanation for. If she had encoded some sort of hidden message, it would only have taken a few seconds to tell the audience. Instead, they say (twice!) that she left NO clues that would reveal her.
There’s what VampyChick already said – she was “taking care of their own” by investigating the disappearances of the other hookers, and finding out too much. But also, killing her and taking her back to the farm, just as they did with all the other girls, wouldn’t have given them their fall guy. They needed to kill her in her sleep when she was with Marv, so they could pin all the murders on him (and, presumably, keep going on about their business when the heat was off).
I never read the comics, but seeing as how the two stories are based on different books, I’m guessing the practical reason is simply that he wasn’t a character in Nancy and Hartigan’s story. They showed him to establish that it was the same place as we’d already seen, but at an earlier time.
In terms of the story, my guess is that he didn’t kill them because it wasn’t in his self-interest to do so. He wasn’t an enforcer guarding the ranch; that’s the police’s job. And based on how he went after Marv, he presumably felt untouchable; Hartigan and Nancy simply weren’t a threat to him. In that sense, they showed him at the farm for the same reason you’d show a wolf in the middle of a dark forest – not that it’s an immediate threat, but just to establish that the farm was an evil, dangerous place.
I was under the impression that The Yellow Bastard himself is the one who worked to get Hartigan released, not Sen. Roark. Hartigan rotted in jail for 8 years until Roark Jr.'s surgery was complete and he was ready wanted revenge. It wasn’t until after TYB’s first encounter with Hartigan in prison that the whole finger bit happened.
Again, not based on anything on the comics, but just guessing: I assumed that after Hartigan was released, he spent some amount of time trying to find Nancy, doing detective work that we don’t see. The city has its own kind of twisted moral code, and we only see Nancy interacting directly with the “good guys” like Marv, and Dwight’s barmaid, and Hartigan – she’s kept relatively safe from the bad guys. I figured that Hartigan would have an easier time finding her, since the people who knew where she lived would be more willing to tell him than they would anyone from Roark’s crew or the police.
She left no clues that would reveal her to the bad guys, but it’s conceivable that she left clues for Hartigan. And no one was paying attention to the letters until TYB recovered, put 2 and 2 together, and used Hartigan to get to her.
After Hartigan’s release, TYB follows him; waiting for Hartigan to find Nancy. Hartigan goes to the bar, looking for clues and finds her stripping at the bar by accident. Hartigan figures out that he’s been set-up, once he recognizes the grown-up Nancy, see’s she still has both her thumbs and tries to get out of the bar…too late, Nancy recognizes HIM and TYB has his answer.
Blind, dumb luck makes much more sense than how they show it in the movie. They give the impression that he walks out of jail and heads right over to her apartment. I guess they just didn’t want to take the extra couple seconds to explain.
Looking for plot holes in Sin City is a little pointless, if you ask me. May as well point out that Marv would have broken both is arms leaping down the stairwell, and both legs crashing through the cop car’s windshield, or that a cops badge never would have stopped a rifle bullet, etc, etc, etc.
So at the beginning, when the assasin killed the woman on the balcony. Did he say “I cashed HER check the next morning” or “I cashed THE check the next morning”? If the former (and I thought I heard that, but people were talking next to me so I wasn’t sure) why did she pay to have him kill her?