Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
With so many common elements between Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s 2005 adaptation of three of Miller’s seedy noir tales and this years-in-the-making follow-up (including not just directors and writers but several actors), it’s puzzling why the newer film feels like a pale imitation of the first movie. However, it’s not completely impossible to suss out, and throughout this review, we will try to dig into the reasons for the disparity.
First of all, mad props must be given to Eva Green as the seductive Ava, a power-hungry woman who has a particular way with men that makes them weak in the knees. This is the second adaptation of a Miller graphic novel she’s been in this year, and as she did in “300: Rise of the Empire,” she damn-near walks away with the movie. There’s something about her classical beauty, strong will, and sexual confidence that fits right into Frank Miller’s over-the-top worlds, and I’m not just saying that because in both films, she isn’t afraid to get naked, although I’d be lying if that weren’t a perk. She goes right up to the point of camp with this material without fear of looking ridiculous, and then kicks things into overdrive at just the right moment. Green may not be a box-office draw for the masses, but she is a true-blue movie star by virtue of being able to elevate every movie she’s in, regardless of whether it’s a great Bond movie or a tone-troubled Tim Burton film (“Dark Shadows”), and she’s definitely earned her stripes this year.
Unfortunately, Eva Green is the lone bright spot in a movie that lacks the dark, visually exciting energy of the first “Sin City,” despite so many things in common with the earlier film. (Ok, I did enjoy the scene with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Johnny getting on-the-fly medical help by Christopher Lloyd’s heroin shooting “doctor.”) Yes, this film (shot and cut by Rodriguez) utilizes the same stylized aesthetic of black, white, and greys, with blasts of color for emphasis when needed (and it’s probably the best use of 3D Rodriguez has managed yet), but almost a decade later, it feels like someone making an over-the-top noir parody rather than something that can last on it’s own, and it doesn’t seem like the actors (even series vets like Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis) appear to be just hitting marks and saying lines rather than inhabiting these characters, like much of the first film’s cast did. The seams with the CG-heavy images are more obvious this time around, making us wish for perhaps a bit more realism than what we’re getting. It’s been a while since I’ve watched the first film– now I’m curious to see if the visuals in that one feel as dated as they do here.
It doesn’t help, however, that the storytelling in “A Dame to Kill For” isn’t as focused and driven as it was in the first “Sin City.” In the earlier film, Rodriguez and Miller used an anthology structure that felt better suited for the material, and the jump from graphic novels to a feature film. In each story, we saw characters from each of the other stories just on the edges of the frame, connecting each vignette as part of a common world, but still keeping things centered on the characters in that particular tale. In this film, the directors try to tell a more connected story, and it just doesn’t work. We see payoffs from one story (like, say, the one with Johnny trying to take down a corrupt politician in cards) long after we’ve moved into another, entirely unrelated tale (wherein Josh Brolin’s private detective Dwight falls into a web of deceit and lust controlled by Green’s Ava), both stories of which are further bookended by Jessica Alba’s stripper Nancy, traumatized by the events we saw with her in the first film, and her attempting to get the strength to kill Powers Booth’s Senator Roark, whose son was the Yellow Bastard in the first movie. Can’t follow that train of thought? I wouldn’t blame you, but I can blame Rodriguez and Miller, who should have just stuck with what worked the first time around.
