Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)
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Critics Consensus: A Dame to Kill For boasts the same stylish violence and striking visual palette as the original Sin City, but lacks its predecessor's brutal impact.
Critics Consensus: A Dame to Kill For boasts the same stylish violence and striking visual palette as the original Sin City, but lacks its predecessor's brutal impact.
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Co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller reunite to bring Miller's visually stunning "Sin City" graphic novels back to the screen in SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR. Weaving together two of Miller's classic stories with new tales, the town's most hard boiled citizens cross paths with some of its more notorious inhabitants. SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR is the follow up to Rodriguez and Miller's 2005 groundbreaking film, FRANK MILLER'S SIN CITY. (c) Dimension Films- Rating:
- R (for strong brutal stylized violence throughout, sexual content, nudity, and brief drug use)
- Genre:
- Mystery & Suspense , Drama
- Directed By:
- Frank Miller (II) , Robert Rodriguez
- Written By:
- William Monahan , Frank Miller (II)
- In Theaters:
- Aug 22, 2014 Wide
- On DVD:
- Nov 18, 2014
- US Box Office:
- $13.8M
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| Buy $13.99 Rent $3.99 |
Cast
-
Josh Brolin
as Dwight -
Mickey Rourke
as Marv -
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
as Johnny -
Eva Green
as Ava -
Jessica Alba
as Nancy -
Rosario Dawson
as Gail
Related News & Features
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RT Podcast: Ep. 043 - George Takei, Sin City 2 & More
– Rotten Tomatoes
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Critic Reviews for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
All Critics (160) | Top Critics (36) | Fresh (71) | Rotten (89)
Reviewers were forbidden from posting a word about this sequel until opening day, lest we give away the shocking secret that it's a carbon copy of its predecessor.
There are a handful of ways in which A Dame to Kill For actually improves on the first movie. Alas, none are enough to prevent it from being a substantial disappointment.
A Dame To Kill For isn't likely to create converts out of those uninterested in the pulpy side of fiction. But it more than earns its keep in terms of lavishing love, mildly ironic as well as pretty damn earnest, on pumped-up noir.
Miller's original comic-book frames serve narrative functions, but these movies are all grabby graphics, devoid of compelling style.
You don't expect to be exhausted by reams of soul-sick narration and artful chiaroscuro compositions, but that's what happens.
For those who appreciated Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's 2005 campy, kinetic film noir homage, Sin City, the 2014 follow-up, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is unlikely to disappoint.
Unfortunately, the long-awaited sequel Sin City: A Dame to Kill doesn't prove to be worth the wait. Whereas the first film was kitschy, ambitious schlock, its sequel is a monotonous, shallow, parody of its predecessor.
The narration feels overdone and the stories aren't as captivating.
Creative, lurid, immature, and pointless
Unfortunately - very unfortunately - A Dame To Kill For offers nothing new and feels terribly, sadly, redundant.
After the near-brilliance Robert Rodriguez achieved with 2005's Sin City comes the sequel that has been promised for so long it crossed that line where people just stopped caring. And with good reason.
Familiar actors come and bloodily go, generally failing to make sense of reductive roles.
There's a bleak beauty to all of this, but also there's a reliance on stereotypes, male and female, that, while they come directly from the source material, are starting to become irritating.
Sin City 2 isn't a particularly inferior film to its predecessor. It's just that, after all this time, the novelty is no longer there.
While it might not feel as complete and well-rounded as the first movie, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For is a worthily prurient follow-up that offers up a whole bundle of new cinematic tricks, and a rogue's gallery of exciting new characters.
While it's not the mind-blowing event that the first film was, there's still enjoyment to be had, and Eva Green makes anything she stars in a must see.
The mood is dry as gunpowder - and as explosive
The stylistic brilliance of the Sin City sequel is much the same as its forerunner in 2005 - an explosive interpretation of Frank Miller's graphic novels in which dames are curvaceous temptresses and men are killing machines at the ready
Becomes full-on parody without even necessarily recognizing it.
Coalesce[s] into a sort of indistinguishable mushiness in Rodriguez and Miller's flabby directorial hands.
If Sin City was a hard-on of sex and violence told in an eye popping world of gritty nourish delights, than Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is its impotent follow up.
No snappy lines; melodrama and vicious violence prevail. Less a pastiche of noir than a hyper-sado-macho parody. There's a scuzzy sense of pointlessness throughout as this noir caricature-slicked franchise goes through its animotions.
The movie is a more joyless affair than all this suggests. Had you never seen a film noir, nor read any Raymond Chandler or Mickey Spillane, you would not guess from watching this picture that the genre was known for whiskey-dry wit.
On the whole this is an impressive, complementary second trip.
Every frame is some kind of digital marvel, yet the most impressive sights are old school: the blunt-instrument fearsomeness of Mickey Rourke's Frankensteinian prosthetic face and the dangerous curves of femme fatale Eva Green's often undraped body.
The paradox of the movie's aesthetic is that it strips the environment of the very thing required to sustain it: grit.
Audience Reviews for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
I can't really decide which of the subplots is the dullest and most dispensable, or if Nancy's revenge story could have been any less pointless or dragged any less had it been cut by half - everything so flat and forgettable that it doesn't even make me want to write about it.
MoreSuper Reviewer
"No one's ever really guessed what hell is. It's watching the ones you love...in pain"
After a nine year gap, director Robert Rodriguez finally returns to the dark graphic novel's of Frank Miller's Sin City and it's pugnacious inhabitants. Fans of the original (myself included) had been waiting with bated breath for more of the same but sadly this doesn't deliver as well as it could and feels somewhat flat in comparison.
Predominantly set as a prequel to the 2005 film, this time we follow the path of Dwight (Josh Brolin) as he tries to help out his old flame Ava Lord (Eva Green) from the clutches of a powerful mogul. Meanwhile, cocksure card-sharp Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has an old score to settle with his father Senator Rourk (Powers Boothe) at the poker table as Nancy (Jessica Alba) swears revenge on the same man for the death of her protector, John Hartigan (Bruce Willis).
There is much to admire in terms of it's stylistic approach and hard boiled, filthy noir but suffers the way many sequels do; it has no substance and lacks the originality of it's predecessor, leaving you with a heavy feeling of having trodden these paths before. Despite some excellent set-pieces the vibrancy of the original is lost and the characters don't gel as well as they did. The first film worked wonders by sticking to chapters where each one was meticulously threaded into the other but in this case, they cross over. There is no beginning middle or end and as a result, we end up with a muddled and incoherent narrative.
As much as the recasting choices are good it's hard to grasp just who's who. Sans Clive Owen as Dwight McCarthy we are given Josh Brolin before the characters facial reconstruction and as much as I admire Brolin, Owen was a better fit. Dennis Haysbert tries to fill the massive boots of the late Michael Clarke Duncan as Manute. Again, it's an admirable attempt but it's not as effective and the least said about Jeremy Piven taking over Michael Madsen's small role as Bob, the better. In fact, you would never be able to work out that it's the same character if you hadn't done your homework beforehand. On the up side, Mickey Rourke's Marv is just as much of a brutish treat as he was in the first outing but he's underused and Bruce Willis delivers nothing more than a cameo as the much trusted Hartigan. It's actually Eva Green who really shines most as a true femme fatale but maybe that's because she does more acting with her breasts than anything else, leading the film down a similar misogynist alleyway. Gordon Levitt's story is apparently tacked on and not an original part of Miller's stories but he's quite effective playing against a cigar-chomping Powers Boothe on fine form once again. Overall, the performances are good enough but they're given very little to work with and for all it's style, it's just not enough to see it past the post this time around.
Another example of how Rodriguez can be such a hit and miss filmmaker. Maybe if he concentrated less on producing, writing, cinematography, editing and music scores, he'd actually have enough left in the tank to concentrate on being a director. An admirable list of talents these may be but he so often bites off more than he can get his gums round and ruins what could have been a great experience. I'm saddened to say that I was left disappointed in this underdeveloped revisit to Basin City. Not so much hard-boiled and half-baked.
Mark Walker
Super Reviewer
Not without its flaws (mostly surrounding some extremely dated noir pacing) "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For" at the very least is better than people are giving it credit for and if you ask me, better than its predecessor; a film which I remembered solely because of its visuals.
Admittedly I was quite bored with Miller's initial set up, finding the introductions of each character mostly style and little substance. But then, as the stories began to ingeniously intersect and the central theme of: the damsel in distress turned badass chick, began to emerge (around 45 minutes in) I found that "A Dame to Kill For" had methodically seduced me.
Read the rest of my review at: http://www.examiner.com/review/sin-city-a-dame-to-kill-for-what-s-the-big-fuss-over-eva-green
Follow me on Twitter @moviesmarkus
Super Reviewer
The characters are shockingly devoid of merit, especially for a drama in these "enlightened" times. Film noir has always highlighted the femme fatale. However these women have little to do other than display their physical attributes. The narrative unrepentantly parades Jessica Alba, Eva Green Jaime King, and Juno Temple through the production like skewered selections by waiters at a Brazilian BBQ. Women are either prostitutes, strippers, or evil temptresses. At least one gets to be a good luck charm. Rosario Dawson literally wears what looks like metal saucepan lids over her breasts in one scene. Jamie Chung doesn't even get to speak. Oh but she displays her knife wielding skills. Can I re-emphasize the violence? The unending obliteration of human beings is gruesome. It's like watching a chef at Benihana chop up various meats and vegetables for 102 minutes and then calling it a drama. The men aren't any more carefully drawn either. Their lack of humanity is disheartening. These guys are rotten to the core. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character is just a body to destroy. He serves no purpose. For the first 10 minutes, I marveled at the visual style. It's remarkable, but soon after the ugliness beneath the production seeps through and overstays its welcome fast.
fastfilmreviews.com
Super Reviewer
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For Quotes
- Marv:
- That right there is a dame to kill for.
- Dwight:
- She is a dame to kill for.
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