Sin City: A Dame To Kill For

A Dame For Which To Kill

The wind moans and howls around me. 

It's a restless and rainy night. 

My throat is croaky, like I've swallowed a shotglass of rusty razors. 

I'm standing in front of my local picture house. 

The last one left in this god-forsaken town. 

So many memories. 

So many friends lost. 

So many heartaches. 

Why did I return here? 

Some Yank flick by Robert Rodriguez, I reckon. 

Yeah, might as well spend my night watching it. 

It's either that or drink the pain away. 

Wasting my night watching cat videos on YouTube. 

So cute...but life isn't. 

It's dark, cruel and full of gritty, sullen voice-overs.

Or so Frank Miller would have you believe!

The original Sin City was released back in 2005, with the promise of ground-breaking graphic style, reminiscent of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and 300, both released earlier in the year. I spoke in a previous article about how I skipped college to go and see Sin City the day it was released, and my tiny brain was blown apart by the visual style. It became one of my favourite films of that year, despite the clichéd writing style of Frank Miller, the blatant hypocritical, overblown characterisation of the main protagonists as well as his obsession with destroying people's genitals. It just was an awesome film noir, filled with cheesy one-liners and unrealistic laws of physics.

I mean, just look at the yellow bastard...

Flash-forward a few years later, and rumours started emerging from Hollywood about the possibility of a Sin City sequel, potentially starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp at the height of their popularity!  My attention was grabbed and my expectations were raised, but the project went nowhere for years, stuck in Hollywood limbo.  I was craving another hard-boiled detective story set in Basin City, but none was being given. Rodriguez continued making his Spy Kids films and Frank Miller tried his hand at adapting another gritty detective comic into another gritty detective film The Spirit, which came and went without making much of an impression. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel of 2013. A teaser trailer was released announcing Sin City: A Dame To Kill For being released in summer of 2014. Despite Depp and Jolie no longer being involved, instead Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Eva Green were cast instead! Two of my personal favourite actors! I was overjoyed! What could possibly go wrong?

My obsession with this man continues to this day...

Similar to the original Sin City, A Dame To Kill For follows three separate, yet intertwining story-lines. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the cocky, arrogant gambler Johnny, with a broad on each arm and a point to prove. Josh Brolin is the returning damsel-defending Dwight (before his surgery to look like Clive Owen) who gets contacted by former lover Eva Green desperate for his help. And finally Jessica Alba reprises her role as Nancy, the stripper with a heart of gold, who has fallen upon hard times since the death of her one true love and saviour, Bruce Willis. Oh and Mickey Rourke's iconic behemoth Marv manages to make an appearance in all three story-lines, sometimes just visually, other times directly involved.

Rourke never looked better

So since some story-lines of this film occur before the original Sin City, and some after, I was quite confused about when certain parts of A Dame To Kill For were taking place. I'm sure this was so that certain characters who died in the previous film could reappear, but instead, baffled me and make me mentally reassess the film's timeline instead of focus on the action on screen. And I pride myself on usually keeping up to speed with film continuity. It makes watching a Marvel film with me a sodding chore. I'm usually leaning over to my film-watching partner and whispering, “That just happened because...” Don't I sound like a hoot?  

But still, this film's continuity confused me, and I still don't quite understand when some events happened in the grand scale of things.

Whilst the visuals remain mind-blowing and pleasing to the eye, the film just seemed like it was trying too hard to be as cool and suave as it's predecessor. It felt like the cult status of the original Sin City inflated Rodriguez and Miller's ideas of what made their film great. Most fans of the first, such as myself, didn't appreciate the film for it's glorification of misogyny, the repetitive inner-narration or the complicated intertwining story-lines; they just enjoyed some gritty, monochrome silliness that took itself too seriously. The film's unapologetic attitude of 'This is what I am' was the reason it gained so many fans, but after so many years of delayed production, the fans deserve a film that was much better and more cohesive than this.

Complicated, bloated and overreaching, A Dame To Kill For makes something once so effortless appear like a chore, and one that I will not be revisiting again. Who knows, maybe I've just grown up and childish, immature films like Sin City no longer stimulate my brain. 

Ha, ha, 'stimulate'. No, I'm still childish. This just needed to be better.

Rating - 4/10

Yes, that jacket potato is wearing glasses...

Until next time folks, thanks for reading!

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