Okay, one of the guys at work asked this, and I couldn’t help him: Who are the couple in the very first scene of Sin City? They’re on a balcony, talking like lovers, and
the man caresses and holds the woman, and then shoots her
So who are they? Especially, who is the man?
You never really find out, but it is implied that the woman (the Customer) wanted to commit suicide, and hired this man (the Salesman) to enact the elaborate romantic scene with her on the balcony, seduce her, and then kill her.
I always assumed that it was a hit and someone hired him to kill her.
I don’t remember the events in the story, but it’s the short story (or whatever you call them in graphic novels) “The Customer is Always Right” in Booze, Broads, & Bullets which is the sixth Sin City book (which is a collection of short stories set in Basin City).
Agreed, but it was strongly implied that the person who hired him was her.
Also, that scene was apparently done way before the rest of the movie, to use as a demonstration to pitch the style and tone of the movie. Which may explain why it’s a bit of a non-sequiter to the rest of the movie.
Also, the guy
is the same guy who shows up in the elevator at the end of the movie, one assumes because the head hooker (heh) called out a hit on her.
I noticed how the beginning and end of the movie bookend quite nicely(though up until now I thought the two girls were the same), but I never realized that he was really a hitman.
At the end of the opening Josh Hartnet’s character (who was in Rodriguez’ The Faculty, as was Elijah Wood, I’m quite happy to see them become part of Rodriguez’ core group) says “I’ll cash her check in the morning.” Maybe not conclusive, but certainly leans toward the fact that she hired him.
Re the end scene in the evelavtor. The Gilmore Whore (sorry, I couldn’t resist) recognized him as a hitman, right?
Yes, but that may just mean the money for killing her. I just never even thought that she hired him. I’m willing to be convinced.
I’m with Love Rhombus. I never once thought the woman he killed hired him to do so, nor did I get the sense it was implied who hired the assassin. I don’t even get that feeling from my copy of BROADS, BLOOD and BULLETS.
If pressed, I might suspect Rosario Dawson’s character.
I took the bookended beginning and end bits with the hitman as stylistic noir vignettes about how life is cheap and death springs swiftly from unlikely places in Sin City.
This implies to me that the Customer was in danger of a truly nasty death (cf the rest of the movie), and thus hired the Salesman to give her a romantic moment and a quick death. If the Salesman was what she was running from, or hired by him, then he’d know what she was so afraid of.
That, and the fact that teh story’s called “The Customer is Always Right.” The woman’s the customer, get it?
For what it’s worth, I too saw it as him getting a check for killing her, not a check from her.
The first time I watched it I instantly got the feeling he was going to kill her…and that she hired him to do so. I re-watched it last night after this thread and I still feel the same. She was no doubt a hooker destined to become one of Kevin’s meals so she hired a hit man to sidestep that fate which intertwines it very well with the rest of the interlocking stories.
Shit. Now I don’t know what to think.
If you hire a hit man, you might not tell them WHY you want a person killed, though. Just “They look like this and will be here.” That’s why he might not know. If she has the money for a “suicide assasin”, why not just leave the city? Your theory does intrigue me, however. That, and I did totally forget that Elijah Wood was a cute lill Hobbit for a time in this movie. Creepy lil’b bugger!
Well over and over in Sin City is the theme you can’t piss off the big boys and not pay for it. There is no escape there’s nowhere to hide and nowhere to go. You won’t sign the confession they threaten your mother with death. They can’t figure out who is sending you letters they cut off a finger and send it to you. They are all powerful and you’re just a bug to be crushed unless you fight a total war against them and even then it’s unlikely you’ll win.
She has nowhere to go she doesn’t have the resources to fight back. She’s totally alone and terrified of her fate. She doesn’t want to be caught and die alone in some basement on the ‘farm’ and if she runs she knows she’ll be hunted down somehow and if they can’t find her they’ll make anyone she cares about pay for it. So what’s the solution? Die…but not alone. Everywhere else in the movie there’s connecting threads if you assume that some one else hired the hitman to kill that girl then she’s totally cut loose from the rest of the story but if she’s a hooker that the senator or his brother had targeted then it dovetails very nicely with the rest of the story.
See this thread.
Huh. I thought she hired him to *protect * her, not realizing he was also hired - by someone else - to *kill * her.
And when I finished the movie I had to replay the first scene to make sure
it was the same guy.
I think the “I’ll cash her check in the morning”, plus the fact that this is meant to be a self-contained vingette (rather than a part of a larger work), makes it clear that she is the one who hired him.
She is also referred to in the credits as The Customer.