5.5/10

Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez return for a sequel of the 2005 original that satisfied eyes with a beautiful art background straight out of Miller’s comics of the same name. A Dame to Kill For is at best a film that was made too late to capitalize on the Sin City lure, and just doesn’t pack the brutal punch that the first film did. I did enjoy Sin City 2, so don’t be too fooled by my rating, but i did feel like there was a lot of time wasted in a movie that will have arguably the best cast of the year. The good things are definitely there in the best cinematography of the year again. Frank Miller gives a comic book feel to the silver screen better than anyone i have ever seen. He knows how his stories are supposed to be translated and he gets the camera work done perfectly. The negative to this is that for those of you who pay extra for the 3D are going to be let down. Sin City are films that are beautiful enough to begin with, so the 3D does nothing extra to show off black and white tones straight out of the noir genre. Back in the cast are Jessica Alba, Mickey Rourke, Rosario Dawson, and Bruce Willis playing a small role as his character died in the first film. Rourke in particular shows us everything we love about Sin City. He is an anti hero who has seen the nasty side of life one too many times. He works as a rescuer of sorts, but always seems like he is in a rut despite being the lone person who acts to save the city at times. Alba wasn’t much different. Her character gets a lethal makeover, but her acting hasn’t improved to bring her character to the next level. We are supposed to believe that this beautiful woman who destroys her face is now ugly, but the look is anything but. Newcomers to the film are Josh Brolin, Powers Boothe, Dennis Haysbert, Joseph Gordon Levitt, and the sexy sultress Eva Green. Green once again steals a film like she did 300 : Rise of an Empire earlier this year. She uses her sexuality to tear apart every man in Sin City, and she is so good at the task that even our biggest of heroes have trouble doubting her capabilities. She is the perfect person for a role of this calling, and was one of the lone bright spots in 3 different dull stories told in Sin City 2. Gordon-Levitt had the best of the three tales in my opinion, but his story ends without much closure. He had a good presence playing off of Boothe in an eye to eye poker game where the winner is anything but a winner. The first act of the film involves this poker game, and that is where this film is at it’s very peak. The story lasts about 25 minutes before we are shown the second story and bulk of the movie in Josh Brolin being used by Eva Green to do terrible things. This story is overwhelmingly long and clocks in around the 50 minute mark. Towards the end of the second story, Christopher Meloni and Jeremy Piven are thrown in at a point where the story is getting very repetitive. Their characters feel rushed and almost thrown in at the last minute. The third story is Jessica Alba getting revenge on Boothe for the death of detective John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) in the first film. This story is way too short because of the overlapping of the second story, so there isn’t much time for the audience to get behind this revenge tale which on paper would’ve had the best following from the audience who saw the first film. The violence is still in this film, but one thing in particular bothers me about it’s presentation. Any time blood is splattered, it’s a white streak across the film. I think this would be the perfect time to flash some red in a color starved black and white background. The white almost makes the violence come off cartoon like even with it coming from the pages of a comic book. The biggest problem with the violence in this film is that it doesn’t pack the same punch of the first film because we have already been introduced to the worst that Sin City has to offer. The first Sin City was revolutionary because no one had ever seen anything like it, and it’s animation to brutality was ahead of it’s time. The second Sin City just feels like a rehashing that is done too late. A decent film, but not a good one. For those of you who have flat screen TV’s, i would just wait till DVD. The 3D is useless, so there is no point in going the extra mile to see this one on the silver screen. If you have a dollar theater in your area, that would be a good time to see it if you are hell bent on the silver screen. In closing, Sin City : A Dame To Kill For is very stylish, dirty, and sexy, but it lacks character in a movie that is full of them. This film struggles to find it’s identity unlike the first film, and that’s why i can’t give it a passing grade. Disappointing.