Movie Reviews

We’ve had to wait nearly ten years for the sequel  but “A Dame To Kill For” sees Robert Rodriguez teaming up with Frank Miller once more for another dose of stylish and gory neo noir. Was it worth the wait? Unfortunately not.

This might seem a bit weird because “A Dame To Kill For” has everything the first film had to offer… a star cast, tons of violence, the same amount of pulp and shot entirely in black and white with a splash of color. But whereas in the first film the stories – disjointed as they were – at least added up in the end, this time around, Rodriguez and Miller seem content to keep on going until everyone is worn out, audience included. In a lame effort to hide it, they upped everything else but as flashy as things may look, in the end it’s always about the story.

It’s not for a lack of action though… the movie opens with Marv (Mickey Rourke) as he comes to and finds himself surrounded by a bloody aftermath without any idea of how he ended up there. The movie then jumps  to Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a gambler who pisses off a crooked senator (Powers Boothe) before diving into a story where Josh Brolin gets lured into a web of deceit and murder by his ex, Ava Lord (Eva Green). Then there’s yet another storyline featuring stripper Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba who mostly bumps and grinds her way through the movie) as she is haunted by the ghost of the cop who saved her life (Bruce Willis in yet another one of his ‘take the money and run’ roles).

So yeah, there’s plenty going on but the storylines aren’t nearly as captivating, the narration is overdone and you can’t help but feel that things looked a lot cooler the first time around. It doesn’t make “Sin City 2 : A Dame To Kill For” a bad movie, but rather one that is unnecessary.