Sin City: A Dame To Kill For – Movie Review

Sin City: A Dame To Kill For – R
Release Date: Fri 22 Aug 2014

Nine years ago, the visual style and noir storytelling of the original Sin City were a novel and new experience. It was something like a mix of a dark graphic novel, animation and live action and was very exciting. However, if you wrote down what actually happens in the story it boils down to what a lot of action movies that go for style over substance have: excuses for some sex, violence and badassery.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For feels like the same world but the intervening years and the loss of novelty in the graphical style take a lot of the dazzle away. In fact, some elements like inconsistent art direction and some painfully obvious CG pull you out of the “hand-rendered” experience as you wonder why Ava (Eva Green) is introduced with red colored lips but spends much of her next few scenes in the same black and white as everyone else.

The haphazard, almost lazy feeling does not end there. Every character in the movie is a steely, hardened bullet sponge until the script says they die. This leaves everyone feeling roughly the same and makes their deaths and triumphs feel equally hollow. It seems bizarre that Ava, the titular Dame has a scene with an unrecognizable Stacy Keach playing a character that would have made more sense with Powers Booth’s Senator Roark. These two characters could have been an absolute blast together, but their stories are completely divorced from one another.

A Dame to Kill For isn’t an unwatchable movie. It’s interesting to return to this world and see some of the effects, but if the comics or the first film didn’t grab you there’s no hope that this one will.

Aaron, Cal, John A. and I saw it in the theater had a discussion in the car: