**1/2 out of ****
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is a sequel made by popular
demand. The results are generally underwhelming despite the fact that it’s
everything one should expect. In 2004, when Robert Rodriguez brought legendary comic book artist Frank Miller’s famous graphic novel series to the big screen - with Miller’s input as
co-director - several things were notably accomplished:
Rodriguez continued his legacy as a maverick filmmaker
working with a limited amount of money while utilizing new digital moviemaking
tools to great effect. While Batman Begins was a couple months away from
showing everyone the most realistic take on a comic book, Sin City took inspiration from 1990’s Dick Tracy, creating the ultimate surrealistic
movie based on a comic book. Above all, we were reminded by a mostly colorless movie, that black and white is beautiful.
The last movie took three of Miller’s books and created an
anthology movie, like Heavy Metal. All the books take place in the same
universe, and the stories often intersect. This time around, according to the
title, the movie was fully committed to only one of these books; a
fan-favorite, A Dame to Kill For.
For those unfamiliar, Frank Miller’s creation is a perverted
dark fantasy inspired by film-noir, glorifying violence with heavy doses of
misogyny. All this would be objectionable to me, if it weren’t so removed from
reality. The stylized gun violence, bloodletting and aggressive sex is
cartoonish to the point of laugh-inspiring juvenile eye-candy. I enjoy it.
Especially with some beer and greasy food. Rodriguez doesn’t make sincere
cinema, he makes fun trash, which walks the line between sensational escapism
and parody.
A Dame to Kill For follows a prowling private detective
named Dwight McCarthy, played in this film by Josh Brolin, who gets pulled into
the schemes of a seductive femme fatale, played by Eva Green. A great amount of
the film, features this beautiful actress nude in some of the most creatively
lit shots -especially the ones involving the emergence of a body from water in
very high-contrast black and white.
This story seems as polished as the previous film’s three
stories and yet it lacks the same punch. Regarding sequel continuity, this one
is weakened by some unfortunate recasting. Dennis Haysbert replaces the late
Michael Clarke Duncan's Manute, competently -but man, do I miss Duncan. What really hurts
this sequel is the lack of Clive Owen, whose face was a pretty essential role
to tie the movies together.
The ultimate weakness of the new movie is a newly created story
that acts as an irrelevant arc. It begins interestingly with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a young reckless gambler with a miscalculated plan. Unfortunately,
this story is preoccupied with the terrible continuation of Jessica Alba’s Nancy Callahan,
a stripper hell-bent on revenge. Mickey Rourke's Marv is a welcome return but his involvement in Nancy's story throws the entire Sin City chronology out of whack.
Still, I can say that I enjoyed this encore as late-night guilty pleasure fun, but not enough
to give it a big recommendation. After a near decade since its predecessor, it
has little to offer that feels fresh.
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