Stripper of the Day: "Nancy Callahan"
Monday, July 9, 2012 at 10:30PM While Magic Mike is in theaters we're celebrating memorable movie strippers.
Just a horny excop watching an exotic dancer
Though Sin City (2005) plays like a compilation of short films rather than a traditional narrative feature, the story that's barely tying it all together features an old cop Hartigan (Bruce Willis) with a heart condition and his life-changing rescue of a kidnapped a little girl named Nancy Hallaway. Hartigan is punished for his good dead, framed as her rapist by a powerful senator and rots in prison. Nancy writes him weekly as "Cordelia". She grows up to be Jessica Alba. And as Hartigan says observantly in voiceover once he's out of the slammer and in her club...
She grew up. She filled out.
The club in question is a "lousy saloon" called Kadies, specializing in Booze & Broads. It advertizes this way: "liquour upfront" and "poker in the back". [Ahem] Given Sin City's horny adolescent boy sexuality, it's impossible not to read that euphemistically.
Given the Alba Mania circa 2005 you'd think her strip routine was the end game of movie stripteases but she doesn't actually take anything off.
The movie leaves the actual nudity to braver ladies / better actresses (Carla Gugino. Holla!). Nevertheless it's Alba that the film worships most among its broad array of "broads".
Very Britney Alba Spears, right?
Her strip routine is very short and doesn't involve stripping so much as lassoing, though she never attempts to catch anything. Nancy sees Hartigan watching and leaps over the drooling customers to plant a kiss on him, ending her routine and giving herself a way to the film's grotesque yellow villain (Nick Stahl, currently a missing person sadly).
This kiss and her subsequent declarations of life long devotion unnerves the scarred cop. "I'm old enough to be your grandfather," he protests. His funniest Guilt-Ridden voiceovers occur once they've temporarily escaped the villain and are holed up in a hotel.
Hartigan: V.O. I've never been all that good with people. When it comes to reassuring a traumatized 19 year old i'm as expert as a palsy victim doing brain surgery with a pipe wrench.
[To Nancy after she makes the moves] There's wrong and then there's wrong and then there's is. For gods sake you're just a kid!"
Are his protestations meant to be funny or merely indicative of Sin City's very specific heterosexuality (in the Madonna/Whore spectrum, let's just say there are only whores. And most of them are worshipped like Madonnas). To LOL or Not to LOL. That's the great mystery of a great many silly genre pieces that take themselves seriously. I recently giggled through Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter but, like Sin City, I kept changing my mind about whether or not the film wanted me to.
What kind of tips do you think Nancy earned at Kadies? I'm guessing crinkled up $1s. That crowd doesn't look like big spenders.
Jessica Alba, Mickey Rourke, Sin City, strippers
Reader Comments (12)
Her casting was ridiculous, in the comic he devotes like, several pages to her each time she dances because she's so enthralling. Not to mention the fact that casting an actress who won't take her clothes off as a stripper is just silly.
I recently saw this movie for the first time a few weeks ago. My friend summed it up best: "It's camp for straight dudes."
For what it's worth, I've always thought of Robert Rodríguez as a director that is very serious at wanting you to know that he's not serious... It almost falls into an "ironic" hipster quality...
That said, I think he's a great director
Kelsy -- camp for straight dudes. I think i get it. Sin City would definitely qualify if there exists such a thing.
I'm pretty sure Nick Stahl was found and checked into rehab!
Oh yeah, Stahl was actually found just over a week after he was reported missing.
He's missing again. He checked out of rehab and hasn't been heard from since.
brittany murphy was incredible in this film!
celeste -- agreed. LOVE LOVE LOVE her scene in her apt with the knife.
Jessica Alba is probably the single worst part of this movie. She's just so awful, by god.
I think this movie is better than you're giving it credit for. I think the trick is to not take it seriously at all; it's much more enjoyable that way.
I think Jessica Alba is actually my single least favorite actress. I think the fact that she thinks she's so much better than she really is, and she rejects her latin roots ... Idk, she's just stupid.