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Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For
| Released |
25 August 2014 |
| Director |
Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez |
Starring
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Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rosario Dawson, Bruce Willis, Eva Green, Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven, Christopher Lloyd, Juno Temple, Lady Gaga |
| Writer(s) |
Frank Miller |
Producer(s)
|
Sergi Bespalov, Aaron Kaufman, Stephen L'Heureux, Mark C. Maunel, Alexander Rodnyansky, Robert Rodriguez |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
102 minutes |
| Genre |
Action, crime, drama |
| Rating |
16 |
|
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Sinful.
It’s unfortunate that Sin City: A Dame to Kill For only came out this year. In the almost ten years since the original, comic book films have become mainstream blockbusters as opposed to risky ventures, so now what felt fresh in the original Sin City feels old and kind of dated here.
Had the film possessed a sense of irony or an unwillingness to take itself seriously – like Guardians of the Galaxy for example – it could have worked. But instead Sin City 2 plays its dumb as nails pastiche noir with an entirely straight face and a total lack of self-awareness.
With such a ridiculously cartoonish premise it seems like a Who Framed Roger Rabbit? style of slapstick comedy blended with gritty detective story would be the only way to go – but instead A Dame to Kill For goes full on gritty, beating its audience over the head with tasteless lashings of sex and violence. It is a film desperately trying to be taken seriously, seemingly never aware of how ridiculous the whole thing looks.
Even the unique visual aspect that set the original Sin City apart from everything else seems oddly muted here. The sequel comes across as a poor imitation, content to copy the original without bringing anything new to the fold. The real problem of course is that simply imitating the noir-influenced visuals of the Sin City comics without any reference to the visual style of actual film noir leaves the film lacking in any kind of cinematic flair – becoming simply a string of pretty layouts rather than a compelling sequence of events.
The original had this problem too, but was saved by its uniqueness. Stripped of the impact of this originality, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For just seems sad.
But the saddest thing of all is how thoroughly the film wastes such a talented cast of actors. With the interweaving Pulp Fiction vignette style narrative taking place mostly before the events of the first film, most of the original cats have returned to do the exact same thing we’ve already seen them do all over again. Mickey Rourke’s Marv gets jammed needlessly into every plotline – not that he was ever necessary, since the other male leads (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Josh Brolin) play what is essentially the same gravel voiced, tough-guy narrator.
Meanwhile the titular "Dame to Kill For" (Eva Green) is evidence of writer Frank Miller’s dreadfully misogynistic attitude toward female characters. This one-note femme fatale (and the only female part not a stripper or a prostitute) spends more time naked than clothed, and sits at the centre of a plot that revolves around square jawed tough guys fighting over her. For character development, she inexplicably transforms from helpless victim into total psychopath.
Everything about Sin City: A Dame to Kill For screams a woeful lack of understanding of what film noir actually was/is. The dialogue is clunky and cringe inducing, the characters one-note cardboard cut outs that are impossible to relate to, the story lines immature. Any nuance this film might have had was left on the cutting room floor, and all that made it to the screen is a mishmash of pointless violence.
Quentin Tarantino probably could have beaten this idea into a reasonably decent film had he returned as a guest director, but an even easier solution might have been to sit Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller down in front of a DVD player and force them to watch The Big Sleep and Sunset Boulevard on repeat until the term film noir actually meant something to them.
- Bernard O’Rourke |
