Following 2005’s Frank Miller’s Sin City, Sin City: A Dame to KillFor weaves a couple of Miller’s stories from his graphic novel of the same name, serving partly as a prequel while adding an additional tale to serve the sequel aspect. The greatest strength that both films have is how wonderfully stylish it is filmed. Director Robert Rodriguez is about as visual a storyteller as there is. It’s the graphic novel come to life. A Dame to Kill For is a mixture of film noir in its narrative and pulp fiction in its delivery. Warning spoilers ahead…
Mickey Rourke as Marv and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Johnny
There are four stories at work here. Some are better than others. The first segment opens with a bang with Marv (Mickey Rourke) serving justice on a bunch of preppy punks. Next up we’re introduced to a gambler named Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) whose luck may be coming to an end when he comes up against the crooked Senator Roarke (Powers Boothe).
Josh Brolin as Dwight and Eva Green as Ava
The third and overall best segment involves Dwight (played this time by Josh Brolin and not Clive Owen) and his femme fatale ex girlfriend Ava (Eva Green). Ava knows how to control and manipulate Dwight or any man for that matter with her hyper sexuality. The final and least satisfying segment centers around Nancy (Jessica Alba) and her self-destructive thirst for revenge against the Senator over the death of Hartigan (Bruce Willis).
Bruce Willis as Hartigan and Jessica Alba as Nancy
Powers Boothe as Senator Roarke
The acting albeit slightly exaggerated, is quite good. Mickey Rourke as Marv is a standout character but it’s Eva Green who steals the show. As with 300: Rise of an Empire, Eva owns the scenes she is in. She has a way of seducing the audience into buying what she is selling. The character of Ava may have been the overall scariest villain in the entire film. Which, says a lot because of Powers Boothe who does more with a smirk than most villains do with a threatening speech.
If you’re a fan of the first, you’ll probably be quite satisfied with this worthy sequel. It’s a comic book movie for adults only with its violence and nudity that would rival Game of Thrones. When the original Sin City came out nine years ago, it was both groundbreaking and refreshing for its unique style of black and white with a splash of color to highlight or extenuate a scene. This unique style was later attempted but was a horrible failure with 2008’s The Spirit, which coincidently was directed by Frank Miller himself. That attempt soured many moviegoers from this form of filmmaking. I hope those who may have been put off by The Spirit will give this film a fighting chance.
James aka “The Dork Knight” is a blogger and writer based out of Upstate New York. For James, it all started with a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… when he dragged his mom to see The Empire Strikes Back 10 weeks in a row. He lives and breathes nerd culture. James is proof that a Star Wars fanatic can be a passionate Trekkie as well. So much so James dressed up as Captain Kirk to the premiere of Star Trek VI in 1991 and still has the uniform.
When it comes to Comic Books, Sci-Fi or Fantasy whether in print or digital, in the theatre or on my TV screen, I’m all about it and I love it. So bring your Phaser (set to stun), Lightsaber, Sonic Screwdriver, a Wand, Mjolnir or the Ring to rule them all, because this site is for the dork in all of us.
