Movie Review: Sin City: A Dame To Kill For

After a nine-year wait, how does Sin City: A Dame to Kill For compare to its predecessor?

By Serene Low

PHOTO: THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY

Sin City: A Dame To Kill For

Thriller (R21)
Mickey Rourke, Josh Brolin, Eva Green
102 min

Almost a decade after the successful release of the first Sin City movie, the next instalment, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, finally arrives on the silver screen. Despite retaining many of the same cinematic qualities that made its predecessor so iconic, Dame does not quite manage the same high notes.

Besides Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a cocky gambler who offends the wrong people with his own self-contained and original narrative, most of the characters are remnants from the first movie.

The film adopts Sin City’s storytelling method of interweaving separate character plotlines into a segmented narrative, with each chapter based on one of the protagonists. Knowledge of events in the first movie is essential, for the sequel is packed with confusing flashbacks.

Fan-favourite Marv (played by Mickey Rourke), a brute with too many knocks to the head and a soft spot for society’s underdogs, is back for more violent confrontations. The character’s simple mindedness and firm (if misguided) ideas of right and wrong make his narrative the easiest to follow, and he quickly steals the limelight.

Jessica Alba returns as nightclub dancer Nancy Callahan, albeit traumatised and bitter after the death of her lover and protector, John Hartigan (Bruce Willis). Once shy damsels, the women of Sin City have turned into lethal assassins, and Nancy transforms into the latter as she gears up to take her final revenge on the terrifying Senator Roarke (Powers Boothe), the main villain of this instalment.

However, it is seductress Ava Lord who plays the femme fatale role (Eva Green), wreaking her feminine wiles on unsuspecting men, including former lover Dwight McCarthy (Josh Brolin, who takes over from the first film’s Clive Owen). Much controversy has arisen over the exaggerated sexualisation of Ava in the film’s publicity, but her character is too vicious and conniving to be dismissed as a mere sex object.

That does not mean Dame is without its gratuitous moments of violence and lust — elements characterised by the first film.

Besides recurring characters, the super-stylised film noir visuals that served the first film so well are equally effective here. The glossy monochrome palette is coupled with vibrant splashes of colour for a gorgeous picture of a depraved city, but even that fails to redeem the convoluted plot.

Although the different character segments work well as self-contained stories, they feel disjointed as a whole. The stories lack a main focus and the different character narratives do not build up to a cohesive climax.

The different timelines also become too much to keep track of — Nancy’s story takes place after Sin City, but her fellow alumni McCarthy’s tale takes place before the events of the first movie.

Dame is as good-looking as its earlier sibling, but lacks the same wit and intelligence. By building on the first Sin City, the film becomes more of an appendix rather than an original movie in its own right.

The assumption that its audience would still have working knowledge of the first movie’s events after nine years also makes the movie inaccessible for newcomers and the memory-challenged.

For maximum enjoyment, it is best to take Marv’s advice to himself: “Put the pieces together — remember”.