Review: Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Nearly ten years have passed since the darkhearted denizens of Frank Miller's Sin City slugged and slinked their way onto our movie screens. Some return in Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, a prequel and sequel of sorts.

Nancy (Jessica Alba), the scarred innocent from the first film, is still gyrating for the drunks and lowlifes of Kadie's. Still distraught from the sacrificial suicide of her father figure / true love Hartigan (Bruce Willis), she's sinking further into alcoholism and despair, unable to pull the trigger on Senator Roarke (Powers Boothe) and exact her vengeance for his perverse son's crimes against her. Hartigan's ghost can only look on in vain.

Roarke, meanwhile, has set his sights on cocksure newcomer Johnny (Joseph Gordon Levitt) who, despite multiple warnings, willfully humiliates Roarke in a high-stakes backroom poker game. Johnny and his good luck charm Marcie (Julia Garner) soon find themselves the targets of Roarke's punctured ego.

These two segments were written specifically for the film by Miller. However, it is the segment entitled "A Dame to Kill For," based on the second book in the Sin City series, that is the pulsating centerpiece of the film. Here we revisit Dwight (Josh Brolin, taking over from Clive Owen) years before the events of the first film, working as a private eye and struggling to keep his demons at bay. Then: "Ava. Damn."

Ava Lord (Eva Green), his former lover now a damsel in distress, abused by her wealthy husband (Marton Csokas) and kept under close watch by her hulking chaffeur Manute (Dennis Haysbert). Won't Dwight help her? He tries to resist but as Marv (Mickey Rourke) notes, "That there is a dame to kill for." Indeed.

Director Robert Rodriguez's faithful rendering of Miller's graphic novel was admirable to say the least. With its strict visual palette (oil slick blacks, titanium whites and selective colorisation), hardboiled dialogue and deliberate angles, it was a gut punch to the senses. The novelty has worn off in A Dame to Kill For; it's easier to notice the clunkiness of the dialogue, the two-dimensionality of the performances, the caricaturist bent in the neo-noir genre.

Yet there is Eva Green, all flesh and blood, delivering a can't-take-your-eyes-off-her performance. Her Ava is a viper of the highest order, wielding her oft-naked body as a weapon, her green eyes piercing straight into her victims' base desires. You don't know whether to kiss her or kill her. Eva. Damn.

Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Directed by: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez

Written by: Frank Miller, adapted from the Sin City series

Starring: Jessica Alba, Powers Boothe, Josh Brolin, Rosario Dawson, Julia Garner, Eva Green, Dennis Haysbert, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Christopher Meloni, Mickey Rourke, Jeremy Piven, Bruce Willis