Sin City Research: Character 1 - Marv

 Marv

Marv is a commonly appearing character in Sin City. He is big, ugly, muscular and tough. Almost on a superhuman level, he survives multiple shots and flinches when hit by a bullet. He is best described in the movie when the character Dwight says "Most people think Marv is crazy. He just had the rotten luck of being born in the wrong century. He'd have been right at home on some ancient battlefield swings an axe into somebodies face, or taking a sword to other gladiators like him." He is a brutal man, but not a completely bad one. He sticks up for friends, and takes care of good people less fortunate by him. Revenge drives him, but he is loyal to the death.

After a beautiful woman sleeps with him for a reason at the time he doesn't care to know, he finds her dead in the morning, revealed to be targeted by Senator Rourke.  He at one point says "I owe you Goldie, I owe you and I'm gonna pay up, if that means going after Rourke dying win or loose, hell, I'll die laughing if I know I've done this one thing right."

He also has mental health problems, fearing he could one day turn into a psychopath without his medicine. Physically, he is arguably the powerful person in Sin City, but he's not particularly intelligent, and he knows it. "I'm too dumb to put the whole picture together yet."

Because of his looks, he doesn't attract a lot of women, and looking so scary even hookers turn him down "I wasn't never even able to buy a woman, cause of the way I look." This is probably why he felt so much attachment to the one that did, without a price.

He is a tough guy that can take a lot of pain. He's tough, ripped with muscle, butt-ugly, often desperate for female company "She fires up two cigarettes and hands me on and I taste her lipstick on it and suddenly,  my hearts pounding so loud I can't hear anything else." But he's loyal. If it wasn't for his loyalty and respect for women, "I don't hurt girls" He would be by far the most sexist character in the Sin City stories.  Him, and Nancy.

"The first words I wrote down (when designing Marv) were 'Conan in a trench coat.' The idea being to bring the kind of barbarianism that you get in a Conan story to an urban setting, and from that came the part that Mickey Rourke plays so well., a barbarian in our world, a savage. He's not a bad guy, and he's not a knight in shinning armor. He's a man from another era. He simply doesn't understand civilization. He believes the proper thing to do when you're up against an opponent is to kill them in the most inhumane way possible. He dose have a code, he protects women, he honors his word, but he just never understood the way we all behave." 

 - Frank Miller - Sin City: The Making of the Movie - p30