Eva Green should fire her agent. This is her second feature this year where she admirably tries to save a movie that doesn’t deserve her talents. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For tries to recreate the magic of the original Sin City, a fresh take on the comic book film. However, A Dame to Kill for lacks the originality and style of the first film in favor of a darker approach. Only Green realize this film should be fun and a little zany: strike that, only Green is talented enough to pull of the feat because of the screenplay (sorry Jessica Alba).
Like the first film, Sin City weaves three vignettes into one feature film. In order of interest:
1) Dwight (Josh Brolin), is manipulated by a femme fatale Ava (Eva Green), to carry out her sinister tasks.
2) Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba), after the death of her cop protector Hartigan (Bruce Willis), seeks the nerve and help of Marv (Mickey Rourke) to enact revenge on Hartigan’s killer, Senator Roark (Powers Boothe).
3) Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) challenges Senator Roark to a high-stakes poker game and beats him, but Roark’s pride hardens into anger as he violently seeks to even the score.
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For replaces the original style of the first film with nothing new. What made the first film an engaging entertainment outside of the cool look of it was the tone, which walked the line between dark comedy and noir thriller amazingly well. This film is more of a morose slog. Every character scowls well and looks the part, but the screenplay inadequately uses the darkness to mine humor outside of the Eva Green plotline. As a result, each plot is extremely bleak and boring without any filler to get us to the end.
Also not helping here is how Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez choose to adapt their stories. They assume that we want to see characters from the previous film and explain weird facial features or how we ended up at the start of the first film. However, the city itself seems to house a host of fascinating characters. The most successful story in Dame to Kill For circles around a new character we get to experience and peripherally involves characters from the previous film. However, this wouldn’t matter if we learned anything new about the characters from the previous film, but A Dame to Kill For just extends (Marv) or fails (Nancy) in evolving the character from the previous film. This often causes A Dame to Kill For to stall frequently, waiting for something different to grace the screen.
Eva Green is amazing in so many ways in this film. She spends 90% of it naked, and surprisingly artfully so. In addition, as she becomes more sinister, the machinations she uses to manipulate men to her will become joyously evil, giving life to a lifeless film. Green rivets whether or not her clothes are on. Among the other newcomers, Brolin’s straight man plays nicely against Green, and we believe his evolution as the story goes on. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Dennis Haysbert gets nothing to do as except look emotionless. Christopher Meloni and Jeremy Piven in limited screen time inject life into the story: we needed more of them. Of the returning players, Mickey Rourke is fun as Marv, if getting nothing new to do. Jessica Alba, when thrust to the forefront, is hard to believe, proving that unlike Green all she has going for her is how hot she is. Powers Boothe has fun embracing a horribly evil person. Rosario Dawson and Bruce Willis are given little to do and therefore leave no impression.
Sin City: A Dame To Kill For fails to capture the wonder of the first Sin City, unless Eva Green is involved. Good lord does Green look and act well in a forgettable film, making me mad. Can’t we get her a role in a Nolan film soon? Lord knows they need some fun in their bleak pictures.