Review: ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’

So I guess “Sin City: A Dame For Which to Kill” didn’t sound sexy enough, so here we are with “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For,” the sequel to the hugely popular and pioneering 2005 surprise hit “Sin City.” When that original movie came out with it’s entirely green screened environs and over the top comic book mentality and hard boiled, R-rated approached, it hit everyone like a shotgun blast to the chest. It was new, fresh, original and different, and when it was over, we all wanted more.

But they took too long to give us more, because here we are almost a decade later and “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” does not pack the same punch. And rest assured, they try to deliver the same impactful blow with the style and content, but it’s just not there, not like it was back in 2005. The sight of real actors working against entirely computer generated sets is no longer novel, comic book based movies are being rammed down our throats now more than ever, and also this movie recalls just as much of “Sin City” as it does the disastrous and woeful “The Spirit” (which was written and directed by this movie’s writer and co-director Frank Miller, a legend in the comic book industry and something of an anomaly in the movie industry). As it is, “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” has all of the same over the top style and violence and intensity, but it lacks the fun and meaning and inventiveness of the original.

This is another series of not really connected stories, involving a whole lot of characters, some of whom get to do a lot, and some of whom do very little. Were you coming to this thing hoping for huge swaths of Christopher Lloyd, Ray Liotta and Bruce Willis? Prepare to have that bubble burst. Or how about some things that weren’t done already in the first movie? Well, unless you consider the fact that this one is available in 3D, this ain’t happening either, as this is now very much a “been there, done that” scenario.

And no, I did not see this movie in 3D, because I am not a child, and 3D is a dumb gimmick rarely used well enough to warrant the increased ticket price or the burden of wearing glasses that then tint the movie I am watching a sickly shade of grey.

So there is this one story about how some dude who is a great gambler (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) shows up at a backroom poker game with the movie’s main baddie Senator Roark (Powers Boothe), and he beats the Senator bad, and then there are repercussions for this. JGL provides a hard boiled voice over narration the whole time. And then there is the story about how some sucker recovering alcoholic named Dwight (Josh Brolin) gets sucked into some crazy game of stabbing and back stabbing and back back stabbing by an ex-lover named Ava (Eva Green), the titular dame to kill for (emphasis on TITULAR), and then there are repercussions for this. Josh Brolin provides a hard boiled voice over narration the whole time. And finally there’s a bit of a story about how stripper with a heart of gold and a refusal to do nudity Nancy (Jessica Alba) wants to kill Senator Roark, and tries to do so, and then there are repercussions for this. Alba provides a hard boiled voice over narration the whole time.

Throw in Marv (Mickey Rourke) in most of these stories as the violent comic relief enforcer fella without his own story and there you go, Sin City sequel time.  Oh yeah, Rourke provides some hard boiled voice over narration.

How much do you like it when characters in movies say things like “I was born at night. But not last night” and other cliched crap like that? Because this movie has a bunch of that. Now actually I do like how these stories are a throwback to the private detective film noir type stories from back in the day, like a hyper violent Raymond Chandler novel, or “The Maltese Falcon” on a bad acid trip. I really like the deliberate lighting, with lots of shadows and characters eyes being illuminated while the rest of the rest is darkened, stuff like that, it is all pretty cool, especially since movies like this really aren’t made anymore. And I totally get the voice over stuff and the terse dialogue and everyone’s no bullshit attitudes and such, but unfortunately here it just doesn’t feel like the movie totally comes together. The parts do not really equal the whole. There are fun moments here and there, and some jokes that work, and some shots that look cool, but when it was over, I was ready for it to be over, and I didn’t want more.

Which is telling, because I think I saw the first “Sin City” in theaters something like three or four times, going with different groups of people and enjoying the hell out of the craziness each time. And this time around? More of a one and out type of thing. Oh well.