Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin
Director: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
Country: USA
Genre: Action | Crime | Thriller
Official Site: Here
Editor’s Note: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For opens in wide release August 22nd.
When Sin City was released way back in 2005, it marked a return to grown-up filmmaking for its director Robert Rodriguez. After starting his first foray into child entertainment with Spy Kids, he promptly drove an enjoyable family concept into the ground with delusions of franchise grandeur. A digital filmmaking champion seemingly from the start, Sin City was the first time that Rodriguez really showed how the medium could be leveraged to craft a different kind of visual aesthetic. Sin City was a graphic novel brought to life, but rooted deeply in its original sensibilities. It was gross, violent, over-the-top, and exhilarating. After nearly a decade of waiting, we are finally being offered its sequel in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. It wasn’t worth the wait.
[With Sin City,] Rodriguez weaved in and out of the stories in a manner that was not distracting, and took a concept that could have been largely confusing and made it highly accessible. With this second entry, those potential problems of the first film become fully realized.
Like its predecessor, A Dame to Kill For is made up of several stories within the Sin City world. These stories tend to cross each other’s paths with plenty of characters appearing in many of the different tales. The timelines are a bit all over the place, with the film’s separate stories certainly not being restricted to the laws of the chronological. Sin City managed to tell its three separate stories, and an additional short, in a manner that felt cinematic. While Rodriguez claimed that Frank Miller’s graphic novels were such a large influence as to name him as co-director, this wasn’t simply a lazy act of throwing a comic on screen. Rodriguez weaved in and out of the stories in a manner that was not distracting, and took a concept that could have been largely confusing and made it highly accessible. With this second entry, those potential problems of the first film become fully realized.
A Dame to Kill For is a cobbled mess. The jumbled pieces are entirely separate from one another and even the previously consistent stylistic touch, struggles to find a steady groove. It reads like a hurried follow up. Where Sin City knew how to use its pops of color and when to go full-on graphic novel, A Dame to Kill For seems less sure. There is plenty more color, with some characters coming through nearly unembellished, but the graphic novel inflections announce themselves with fanfare rather than emerging organically. In this time of separation from the property, Rodriguez has become lazy and forgotten just how to maximize his own visual bravado. Gone is the confidence, replaced by a nervous confusion, quizzically pleading with the audience, “is this what you want?”
The film’s centerpiece, the story from which it draws its subtitle, is its strongest section. Bringing back Dwight, pre-“a killer with a new face,” and showing us a bit more of who he was before the events of Sin City. This section is the most classically noir of the entire film. It wears its roots with pride, boasting a tormented hero, femme fatale, and ever-present window blinds casting their ominous horizontal slits. Brolin does a fine job as the more grizzled Dwight and Dennis Haysbert’s Manute works, if being much less imposing than Michael Clarke Duncan’s; but the true star of this segment is Eva Green.
Green fantastically transforms into the ultimate femme fatale, able to shift between menacing evil and meek manipulation in the blink of an eye. She oozes charm and forces the audience to fall for her wiles all while knowing full well how bad she is for you.
Apparently, Green has made it her goal to be the best part of lackluster Frank Miller sequel adaptations, previously being the unquestionable highlight of this year’s 300: Rise of an Empire. Green fantastically transforms into the ultimate femme fatale, able to shift between menacing evil and meek manipulation in the blink of an eye. She oozes charm and forces the audience to fall for her wiles all while knowing full well how bad she is for us. As she brings Ava Lord to life, she embodies all that neo-noir hopes to be, crafting a beautiful marriage of both old and new, and skillfully devouring every scene she inhabits. Through her performance she rescues the struggling film, being the only thing worth remembering in this tired retread.
The other stories, especially Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s and Jessica Alba’s (sections that have never shown up in the graphic novels), never fully establish themselves. They play out just as you would expect, sapping the shock and excitement from the Sin City world. It is as if Sin City has become bored with itself, stoically going through the motions until it begins to crumble into a disgusting self parody. The most egregious offense that A Dame to Kill For can be sited is turning a strange and engrossing world into one of boredom. Rather than being a piece of cinematic entertainment for many, it has devolved into pandering fodder for horny adolescents. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is an unappetizing follow-up to a far superior film. It is a ramshackle collection of stories that is far from cinematic and lands with a hollow thud.
The most egregious offense that A Dame to Kill For can be sited is turning a strange and engrossing world into one of boredom. Rather than being a piece of cinematic entertainment for many, it has devolved into pandering fodder for horny adolescents. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is an unappetizing follow-up to a far superior film. It is a ramshackle collection of stories that is far from cinematic and lands with a hollow thud.
