Sin City: A Dame to Kill For - A Visual Masterpiece Undone by a Weak Plot
Awakening on a highway surrounded by corpses, the hulking Marv (Mickey Rourke) struggles to piece together the events of the previous night. Meanwhile, a cocky young gambler named Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) attempts to outsmart the city’s most powerful crime boss, Senator Roark (Powers Boothe), at the poker table. Dwight (Josh Brolin), a private investigator, finds his life turned upside down by the return of his former flame, Ava (Eva Green), now the wife of a wealthy businessman. And Nancy (Jessica Alba), a tormented stripper, plots her revenge against Senator Roark for the death of Detective Hartigan (Bruce Willis), who haunts her dreams and waking hours.
Pop sensation Lady Gaga makes a cameo as a waitress who lends a helping hand to Johnny in his time of need.
The neo-noir anthology “Sin City” was a cinematic sensation back in 2005. A star-studded cast, memorable characters, and Robert Rodriguez’s dynamic direction would have ensured its popularity even without its groundbreaking visual style. But “Sin City” had an ace up its sleeve: a unique aesthetic that earned it the Technical Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. By filming the entire movie against a green screen, Rodriguez and his co-director, Frank Miller, the acclaimed comic book creator, were able to freely manipulate the visuals, playing with contrasts of light and shadow, black and white, and selective color. “Sin City” was a live-action film that looked like an artistic adult comic book – dark, captivating, violent, and simultaneously trashy and high art.
Despite its experimental nature, “Sin City” was a box office success. However, due to various reasons, primarily legal issues, the sequel was delayed, and the long-awaited “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” is only now hitting theaters. Was it worth holding our breath for nearly a decade for a new dispatch from Basin City? Absolutely, if the first “Sin City” resonated with you primarily as a groundbreaking stylistic experiment.
Jamie Chung of “Sucker Punch” replaced Devon Aoki as the silent assassin Miho, as the actress from the first film was pregnant with her second child during filming.
Visual Spectacle
Comparing any scenes from the two films, it’s easy to tell which one came first and which one is the sequel. The 2005 film seems like a first draft compared to “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.” Visually, the sequel is bolder, more impressive, more uncompromising, and more inventive… and more like a comic book. Rodriguez and Miller have raised the bar significantly, especially in the action sequences, which have gained a dynamism and scale that the first “Sin City” lacked. It’s hard to explain in words, though. You have to see “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” to appreciate how far they’ve pushed the artistic boundaries established in the previous film.
Story Shortcomings
The plot of “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For,” on the other hand, is disappointing at every turn. It seems that all the authors’ ingenuity was poured into the visuals. The opening segment about Marv is amusing enough (in a dark way), and the story about Dwight and Ava at least ticks all the traditional noir boxes (a detective haunted by his past, a multifaceted femme fatale, a nightmarish crime boss…), although it doesn’t offer anything more engaging than Eva Green’s naked body. However, these two stories are taken from Miller’s comics, and the author clearly had time to develop them. The other two novellas were created specifically for the film and, as a result, feel rushed, with minimal inspiration and wit.
The novella about Johnny is particularly irritating, as it was clearly intended to have sudden plot twists and intricate “plans within plans” in the style of “The Sting.” Instead, the plot unfolds as straightforwardly as possible, and the ending is striking not for the hero’s ingenuity, but for its absence, despite the fact that he supposedly spent years preparing for his showdown with Roark. Surely, he could have come up with something smarter than a three-point plan with the word PROFIT at the end! The novella about Nancy is even more straightforward, but it’s essentially just an epilogue to the first film, and its intriguing plot threads were left behind in 2005.
The most unpleasant aspect of the film is its repetitiveness. In 100 minutes of screen time, the characters storm their enemies’ estates three times (!!!). Marv (brilliantly played by Mickey Rourke) participates in two of these assaults. Yes, the three assault scenes are not exact copies, but couldn’t they have come up with something else? For example, in one segment, the characters could storm an estate, in another – a skyscraper, and in the third – a dungeon… Or they could have done without three assaults altogether and invented something more original. As it is, when the characters embark on their third raid, it elicits nervous laughter and complete disappointment.