Culture Musings - ‘Sin City’ sequel gets stranded on wrong side of tracks

Apart from Eva Green’s feral performance, ‘A Dame to Kill For’ squanders a lot of talent, including co-directors Robert Rodriguez and comic book creator Frank Miller.

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  • Coutesy of Dimension Films
  • BEHIND GREEN EYES: Josh Brolin finds Eva Green to be ‘A Dame to Kill For’

At a time of expansive crime dramas like “Breaking Bad” and “True Detective,” film noir can seem kind of small. The hard-boiled movie genre emerged from the cynicism that followed World War II and reveled in human darkness and shadowy black-and-white cinematography. Film noir found human nature to be utterly venal, with bloodthirsty men manipulated by ruthless women.

Today’s best cable television not only ramps up sex and violence but also the moral complexity of crime stories. In contrast, film noir can feel primarily like a visual aesthetic, nowhere more overtly than 2005’s Sin City and its new sequel, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Dame proves to have some of the strengths, all of the weaknesses and none of the novelty of the first film.

Again, filmmaker Robert Rodriguez shares director credit with once-acclaimed comic book creator Frank Miller, who adapts his own graphic novels. Miller’s original panels, inspired by the covers of old-school pulp novels, placed femme fatales and other noir archetypes in environments furnished by almost nothing but inky blackness. The films use green-screen technology to lovingly recreate the comic book aesthetic of “Basin City” virtually hewn out shadow.

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The original Sin City found a compelling central figure in Mickey Rourke’s hulking bruiser Marv, but petered out after the character’s death. The character returns in Dame’s prologue, which includes a memorable image of tiny cars encircling his Frankenstein face as Marv tries to remember events leading up to a traffic accident. Marv weaves through the rest of the stories, offering two-fisted back-up to the other protagonists. Dame’s chronology seems to make it both prequel and sequel, but I’m unequal to the task of untangling the timeline.

Dame enlists some of Hollywood’s most charismatic actors for the film’s interlocking tales. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s high-rolling Johnny swaggers in, cashes out slot machines and barges into a poker game to challenge Sin City’s most powerful man, Senator Roark (Powers Boothe).

Meanwhile, smoldering private eye Dwight (Josh Brolin) loses his better judgment in the presence of his old flame Ava (Eva Green). The film’s title character, Ava dumped Dwight to marry up but claims to now be a damsel in distress, guarded by a sinister chauffeur (Dennis Haysbert). Ava’s green eyes and red lips gleam against the monochromatic backdrops, and Dwight falls under her spell even though he knows not to trust her.

Green and Brolin show significantly more skin than any of the film’s actual strippers, particularly Nancy (Jessica Alba), a holdover from the previous film nursing her own grudge against Roark. Boothe can play wonderfully smug bad guys, but having him the boss villain of multiple stories makes Dame even more repetitious. Presenting the final storyline from a female point of view may be Dame’s idea of empowerment, but Alba barely makes an impression.

Rodriguez and Miller really lean into the sexism of the material, which portrays women as either fetishized victims, fetishized villains or fetishized avengers. Green’s go-for-the-gusto performance nearly transcends the material — when she rises nude from a steaming hot tub, she might as well be emerging from one of Hell’s pits. Sin City could play as a satire of the male gaze if the filmmakers had any self-awareness or interest in characterizations.

The classics of film noir ground their films in enough humanity that their bloody outcomes have the ability to shock. The film hints at a tragic trajectory for Christopher Meloni’s cop increasingly obsessed with Ava, but his story is barely a blip on the radar. Instead, the storylines build to orgies of comical violence, including multiple beheadings from a lady ninja, which feel no more consequential than video game kills.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For leaves you wondering what happened to Robert Rodriguez, who built a reputation as an inventive, economical filmmaker with a passion for genre movies. Rodriguez’s friend and sometime collaborator Quentin Tarantino has pushed his art into intriguing directions without losing his love of exploitation flicks. Rodriguez, following up the wearying Machete movies, seems to have lost his ability to discern smart homage from unredeemable junk. Dame’s worst sin may be the one Rodriguez committed against his own promise.

At least his Sin City films introduce black and white cinematography to audiences who wouldn’t be caught dead watching an old movie.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. 2 stars. Directed by Robert Rodriguez. Stars Eva Green, Jessica Alba. Rated R. Opens Fri., Aug. 22. At area theaters.






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