Sin City wasn’t
really a movie anyone was waiting around with baited breath to spawn a
sequel. Yeah, the first movie was good,
but it was good in a one-in-a-million type of way, having the best combination
of cheese, blood, guts, and style that one could hope for in a Frank Miller
production. This was probably due to the
co-direction of the ever stylistic Robert Rodriguez, and likely had less to do
with Frank Miller’s writing or directorial input. When Miller went on to direct The Spirit, he ended up making an
infinitely sillier movie that was so devoid of the stylistic violence that
carried Sin City that the inane
writing almost seemed like an intentional effort to sink the film. And now here we are, nine years after the
first Sin City with A Dame To Kill For, a film that only
seems to exist because Rodriguez and Miller agreed to do a sequel back in 2006
and have only just now gotten the time and resources together to make it happen
long after anyone is likely to give a damn.
If you’re looking for more Sin City, then this film very basically delivers on that
front. The same overly-pulpy noir
narrations accompany stories of bad people doing bad things, and even the good
guys are morally compromised. The first
film managed to make this work because it felt like junk food, a guilty
pleasure that combined adolescent obsessions with noir violence and comic book
aesthetics, distracting you from the inherently shallow nature of its stories
by shifting between them in vaguely interlocking fashion. A Dame
To Kill For, though, attempts the same thing while trying to take place
both before and after the first film, making any sense of continuity convoluted
and confusing.
The first film also had an advantage in that the stories all
felt unique, with characters that were fleshed out as much as they needed to be
and were memorable precisely because they didn’t overstay their welcome. The sequel screws that up by focusing heavily
on bringing back old characters, who now feel like one-note caricatures of
their representations in the first film played by actors who have aged too much
to be convincing in their return to the roles.
But even though that surreality could otherwise be forgivable, the
film’s repetitive elements make this one a pale shadow of its predecessor. Two of the four stories have the same primary
antagonist, and two of them use emotional manipulation of Mickey Rourke’s Marv
to take down an army of bad guys. This
is lazy writing even by Frank Miller standards, and its style can’t make up for
its lack of substance.
And this is primarily because the style isn’t even as
gratuitous as the first film. The film’s
violence has a routine, matter-of-fact nature to it that robs it of any
emotional impact. Quick cuts to men dying
to mundane gunshots and stab wounds is not exciting, and even when the film
does opt to show us a modicum of gore, it feels like something that was done
better in the first film.
Normally, I would try to judge a film on its own merits
without excessive comparison to its progenitor, but Sin City: A Dame To Kill For is practically inviting me to do
so. It doesn’t have an identity separate
from its better realized older sibling, and it so desperately tries to mime Sin City that it comes across as
pathetic. If you’re one of the two
people who have been craving a new cinematic installment in the Sin City franchise, you probably already
saw this in theaters. Everyone else
doesn’t need to bother; the first film will scratch that itch if you have it.
Did anyone else see The
Spirit? It’s one of those films
that’s so hilariously bad that I’m surprised it hasn’t garnered a cult
following. Let me know in the comments
below.
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