Although the retro-futuristic visual style still has a vibrant and immersive quality - the problems this time around is that the stories simply aren't very engaging enough and the central tale, which involves the titular 'Dame to Kill For', is particularly dreary and overlong. The most enjoyable elements involve Joseph Gordan-Levitt's cocky, charismatic gambler, Powers Boothe reprising his role as ruthless Senator Roark and Mickey Rourk's likable tough guy 'Marv'. However, the first film was perversely enjoyable because it was so detached, empty and heartless and this time around it somehow attempts to deal with the human motives of the violence in a completely stodgy and ineffectual way. There was something cold and methodical about Sin City's linear portmanteau sub-Pulp Fiction structure but A Dame to Kill For's more modern inter-cut/interwoven style is at once distracting and totally uninvolving - even the trashy hard-boiled, noir-inflected voice-over, which always stepped over into melodrama in the first film, now sounds leaden and risible.
Saturday 25 October 2014
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For **
When Robert Rodriquez and Frank Miller's Sin City opened in 2005 it was a flashy, sleazy pulp-noir revenge film with a striking, but crucially distinctive, comic-book visual aesthetic. A Dame to Kill For expands upon the existing narrative of Sin City whilst offering a new set of stories occurring in time frames before and after the first film.
Although the retro-futuristic visual style still has a vibrant and immersive quality - the problems this time around is that the stories simply aren't very engaging enough and the central tale, which involves the titular 'Dame to Kill For', is particularly dreary and overlong. The most enjoyable elements involve Joseph Gordan-Levitt's cocky, charismatic gambler, Powers Boothe reprising his role as ruthless Senator Roark and Mickey Rourk's likable tough guy 'Marv'. However, the first film was perversely enjoyable because it was so detached, empty and heartless and this time around it somehow attempts to deal with the human motives of the violence in a completely stodgy and ineffectual way. There was something cold and methodical about Sin City's linear portmanteau sub-Pulp Fiction structure but A Dame to Kill For's more modern inter-cut/interwoven style is at once distracting and totally uninvolving - even the trashy hard-boiled, noir-inflected voice-over, which always stepped over into melodrama in the first film, now sounds leaden and risible.
Although the retro-futuristic visual style still has a vibrant and immersive quality - the problems this time around is that the stories simply aren't very engaging enough and the central tale, which involves the titular 'Dame to Kill For', is particularly dreary and overlong. The most enjoyable elements involve Joseph Gordan-Levitt's cocky, charismatic gambler, Powers Boothe reprising his role as ruthless Senator Roark and Mickey Rourk's likable tough guy 'Marv'. However, the first film was perversely enjoyable because it was so detached, empty and heartless and this time around it somehow attempts to deal with the human motives of the violence in a completely stodgy and ineffectual way. There was something cold and methodical about Sin City's linear portmanteau sub-Pulp Fiction structure but A Dame to Kill For's more modern inter-cut/interwoven style is at once distracting and totally uninvolving - even the trashy hard-boiled, noir-inflected voice-over, which always stepped over into melodrama in the first film, now sounds leaden and risible.
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