Review of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) by Kenny S — 13 Jun 2015

A continuation of stories started in the first Sin City (2005) or in some cases an origin story, A Dame To Kill For shows us more tales from Basin City based on the graphic novels by Frank Miller. I found the first film excellent. A terrific blend of bloody action and compelling storylines with the style of a comic book. Although this film continues with the style, the stories in this film do not capture the attention of the viewer like the first. Even the style of this film does not work as successfully as the last, with colour being splashed perhaps too liberally. In the first there was three storylines each as interesting as the last, edited to be intertwined with each other in a fascinating non sequential order. This is attempted in the second film but with no real success. Instead, a large story is plopped in the middle with two mini pieces split and tacked on to the beginning and the end.

Josh Brolin takes over Clive Owens role of Dwight from the last film and doesn't do it as well. Mickey Rourke returns as Marv but just seems to be added into other people's stories to give him something to do. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a short story which comes to a swift conclusion and offers nothing to the overall scheme of Sin City. Similarly Jessica Alba's crazy short story offers unnecessary and unwanted closure from the first films story. I also think that Devon Aoki is a much better Miho than Jamie Chung.

I feel that Eva Green is the most successful in her part. She was hired to act sexy and be a dame to kill for, something that I think she pulls off. An alternative title could have been Eva Green: See Her Naked.

Sin City: A Dame To Kill For may look like the original, but is about as half as good. It lacks the compelling story and characters, the amazing style and intense action of the first, replaced by an average duplicate which tries to replicate and fails.