Quik Flix Hit

Summer Movie Series

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

Rated R

Aldamisa Entertainment

I was gobsmacked as I watched the first Sin City in 2005. Not only was it visually sumptuous, but its noir-drenched characters were smartly drawn and its bleak interconnecting stories, individually and collectively, engaged. Every frame of the Robert Rodriguez–Frank Miller codirected effort vibrated with originality and purpose.

I was deflated watching this sequel. Not only was there nothing new to the proceedings, its visuals seemed to rest firmly on its laurels. No real effort seemed to be made to one-up the masterful look of the original. The films boast crisp, hyper-real black-and-white cinematography, with color splashed in here and there for effect. To recreate the look of Miller’s groundbreaking graphic novels, the films employ stylized camera angles and movement, smoke and shadow, jump-cuts, smash-cuts, projection, animation—everything.

Watching the first film, I remembered thinking a lot of effort went into how and when to apply color in an essentially colorless landscape. Blood or lips or eyes and teeth or eyeglass lens tipped the viewer to method and motive. This time there’s a randomness to the use of color, like there was a mission to put some color somewhere in every frame, without thought of why (or if) it’s needed.

The plot is a rehash of tales better told the first time around. We return to Basin City, a lethal, sess-pool metropolitan city inhabited by hardboiled lowlifes and dames in distress. In the first film, we spent time with the characters before the mayhem began; this time characters are tripping over each other with nary an arc between them. And remember the visit to Old Town, the red-light district where even the cops are afraid to go? In the original film, it’s populated and protected by prostitutes, several of whom are given names, personalities and things to do. This time, there’s a perfunctory trip to Old Town that renders the nameless women as relevant as any number of thugs running throughout the film.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception, 300 Days of Summer) brings bluster and consideration to a role that ultimately is much ado about nada. His plight and fate seemed completely avoidable and he seemed smart enough to sidestep all of it. Jessica Alba’s stripper character Nancy worked better the first time when she was a minor player; this time her expanded role underscores the character’s thinness. Josh Brolin (Oldboy, 2013), who usually engages, here is wasted in a snarling role that’s one note; at least Clive Owen had fun with the same character in the original film. Eva Green as the oft-nude femme fatale is ridiculously obvious from the moment she slinks into a bar until her final moments on screen. I never believed her character. Even Mickey Rourke’s fan favorite Marv (he returns out of chronology) can’t get this mess off the ground. Only Powers Boothe’s power-mad senator brings energy to the proceedings.

What a bust.

| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive