Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
In the bowels of Basin City, there are no happy endings. So don’t look for any in these four stories of sex, death and violence.
Barfly thug Marv (Mickey Rourke: Java Heat) hasn’t made a man bleed in days. It’s starting to get to him. As his impulse toward violence grows, he seeks an outlet to vent his rage.
Gambler Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Don Jon) is looking to make a score. Never having lost a game of chance, he buys into the richest card game in the city, playing police chiefs, senators and high rollers to take home millions.
Private Eye Dwight (Josh Brolin: Guardians of the Galaxy) meets his long-lost love Ava (Eva Green: Penny Dreadful) at a bar. She promises love and fidelity if Dwight helps extract her from her marriage to the rich sadist for whom she left him.
Stripper Nancy (Jessica Alba: The Spoils of Babylon) lost the love of her life because of the threats of a powerful senator (Powers Boothe: Nashville). Now an alcoholic with a tenuous grip on sanity, she vows revenge.
Director Robert Rodriguez made the first Sin City film — adapted from Frank Miller’s popular graphic novels — in black and white so it looked ripped from the pages of a comic book. In this sequel, he seems to have forgotten what made the original a success. This sequel is so bad that it taints the memory of its predecessor.
Despite graphic violence, near constant nudity and plenty of pulpy dramatic dialog, this movie is so dull that it could be used in a sleep study.
The four story lines are smashed together rather than interwoven. The painterly quality so visually arresting in the first is replaced with shots of naked women framed as high art.
Actors could save this one — were not most of them woefully inept or miscast. Jessica Alba continues to prove she’s one of the worst actresses working today. Gordon-Levitt’s slight frame is dwarfed in Miller’s world of hulking men.
Only Rourke understands how to work with the pulpy dialog and plot. His Marv — who impressed in the first Sin City — is a sweet lunk who happens to be a dangerous psychotic. Rourke generates both sympathy and fear.
With nothing but Mickey Rourke’s 20 minutes of screen time to recommend it, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For fails on three counts: film, action and cheap pornographic thrills.