Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (*½)

Directed by: Robert Rodrigues and Frank Miller

Starring: Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rosario Dawson, Bruce Willis, Eva Green, Powers Boothe, Dennis Haybert, Ray Liotta, Christopher Meloni, Jeremy Piven, Christopher Lloyd, Jaime King, Juno Temple, Stacy Keach, Marton Csokas, Lady Gaga

Seen: August 22^nd 2014

*½ Out of ****

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is the sequel to 2005’s fantastic Sin City. Thematically and visually the movies are extremely similar, but the original is a far superior. In 2005 the visual impact of Sin City was phenomenal, but the sequel looks almost exactly the same 9 years later in an age where visual effects and creativity are so ‘easy’ and it’s story(s) simply doesn’t touch the original. The sequel retains the absolute film nior darkness and presentation but the exploitation is notched up to a point where the viewer would be fully justified in wondering whether the filmmakers occasionally simply forgot to stop filming while staring at Eva Green’s breasts…

The movie incorporates four of Frank Miller’s Sin City storylines, with two of them actually rather weak, not offering much apart from a chance for Joseph Gordon-Levitt to also be in a Sin City movie and Marv (Rourke) to beat up some more evil Sin City residents. In The Long Bad Night, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Johnny, a gambler with great luck, who arrives in Sin City to make money; easy with his luck. He ends up at Senator Roark’s (Boothe) poker table, but when he beats Roark he is badly beaten and left penniless before his girlfriend is murdered. He returns to the poker table after being fixed up by Kroenig (Lloyd) a very Doc Emmett Brown like character (Back to the Future, for those who don’t know), dead-set on beating Roark a second time. In Just Another Saturday Night, Marv wakes up between crashed cars and dead bodies. Retracing his steps he figures out it all came about after he went after a few frat boys who were burning homeless men alive. Marv had to interrogate one of them after the guy called him Bernie, since Marv is uncertain of many events and knows his memory is sketchy.

Years before the events of Sin City, in A Dame to Kill For, Dwight (Brolin) is trying to clean up his life, working as a private detective. He saves a young prostitute’s (Temple) life when she is almost murdered by her lover (Liotta). Unrelated, Dwight receives a call from Ava Lord (Green), a past lover who left him for a wealthy tycoon, Damian Lord (Csokas). Ava manipulates Dwight into taking out her husband in an attempt to get his money and enforces it all through her almost mechanical bodyguard Manute (Haysbert). Nancy’s Last Dance transpires four years after the events of the first movie, with Nancy (Alba) now an alcoholic mess after Hartigan’s (Willis) death while saving her from Roark’s son. Her only goal is getting vengeance on Roark, which Marv steps in to help her with after he sees her breaking down. They assault Roark at his secure home, Nancy wielding a pump-action crossbow (yes, crossbow, not shotgun…), and Hartigan’s ghost makes a saving appearance.

                            

The movie features some smartly stylized action sequences and some almost inventive camera angles/edits which at times come across as almost more ridiculous than creative. The characters have less moralistic drive than in Sin City in 2005, with lust, revenge, greed, and vengeance being the main drives. In Sin City Hartigan’s selfless suicide coupled with his words “An old man dies, a young girl lives” added a certain emotional gravitas, but in Dame it’s all blunted by long shots of Jessica Alba’s soulless stripper gyrations on stage and Eva Green’s constantly bared breasts while she is a manipulative bitch for the sake of nothing else but being a manipulative bitch.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For barely held my attention, which is a shame as the original is a favourite. The actors are all fine in their respective roles, but the screenplay is hollow and vapid, with none of the unexpected impact, none of the surprise of the original. Sin City pushed the boundaries with its villains and their motivations, where the villains in Dame are simply greedy, two-dimensional murderers. Sin City will remain a favourite for me, but I’d rather forget Sin City: A Dame to Kill For as soon as possible.