Review of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) by Midlands M — 08 Nov 2014

"This rotten town... It soils everybody." So says Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) and oh how true it is. This sequel to the 2005 hit continues the monochrome graphic-novel style from the pages of the comic and combines more of Frank Miller's brutal noir stories, some adapted plus a few new ones written especially for this movie.

We get brutal card games, revenge violence, femme fatales and crooked cops and although these themes continue from the original with equivalent gloss, it does not have the same excitement and it's difficult to know exactly why.

For me, the stories were less engrossing - my favourite being Joseph Gordon-Levitt's "The Long Bad Night" (actually one of the original stories for the film) - yet the plotting and editing were awkward and cumbersome.

Marv (Mickey Rourke) is both a great character and well acted plus there are corking cameos from Lady Gaga and a too-little-seen Christopher Lloyd as a shifty "doc" whilst Eva Green (from 300: Rise of an Empire) is definitely to die for with a seemingly endless set of partially dressed explicit scenes.

However, the large cast fail to reach any chemistry on screen and a HUGE misstep for me was the incessant recasting of actors. With the sad passing of Michael Clarke Duncan we get an understandable but dull replacement, Devon Aoki and Michael Madsen are replaced and the worst crime is there's no Clive Owen (who I only like in one film, guess which).

Although I do like Josh Brolin and he gives it his all, the sequel/prequel plot was confusing and compounded by his involvement in a facial plastic surgery story! Sadly then, this is the second Frank Miller sequel (after Rise of an Empire) in 2014 to miss the mark - which just proves you can't really go back.

It's 9 years too late and sadly the biggest sin is that it is actually quite boring and Rodriguez's roulette of good-to-bad films continues. 6/10 Midlands Movies Mike.