Movie Review” “Sin City: A Dame To Kill For” 4 Out of 4 Stars

By Kyle Osborne

Let’s be honest, movies start getting worse, not better, during August and early September. Typically, these few weeks are when Hollywood dumps the films that weren’t good enough for summer and aren’t good enough for late fall and the holidays. Talk about “expendable.”

So, it’s nice to be surprised by “Sin City: A Damn To Kill For,” the follow-up to the 2005 film that brings back the things that worked about the first flick, and fixes the things that didn’t.

Graphic novelist Frank Miller has written a couple of new episodes especially for the movie, and uses bits from a couple of his five graphic novels that weren’t used nine years ago. But unlike the 2005 movie, which was choppy and had end credits after each episode, which killed any sense of momentum, “A Dame To Kill For” flows in and out of some of the story threads before ending with a call-back from the opening story.

The “Dames” in question are certainly fabulous, but these neo-Noir tales are dominated by monotone tough guys who narrate in voice-over, a purposely corny nod to the old Hollywood Noir films.

Mickey Rourke is back with layers of prosthetics which cover the layers of plastic surgery he’s had, giving new meaning to the term “square-jawed (anti) hero.” He and Joseph Gordon-Levitt , and Josh Brolin do a bang up job of playing world weary, sad sacks, who always make mistakes when it comes to the ladies. And they’ve all got the pipes to do the gravelly voice work with authority.

Powers Boothe does what he does best, playing a slimy and mean villain who doesn’t like to lose at Poker. Dennis Haysbert is the driver for the film’s main femme fatale, played by Eva Green.  And that’s just the top line of a huge cast that features a lot of the faces you saw in the first “Sin City,” and new ones too.

Seeing this in 3-D, I was instantly sucked in by the super-stylized look of the movie. The black and white, punctuated with brilliant color here and there, is eye candy of the best kind. Robert Rodriguez, who co-directs with Frank Miller,  has always liked movie violence and he has turbo charged this movie with hyper-violent scenes that are so over the top that audiences usually chuckle, rather than wince. It’s not realistic, it’s pretend, and the movie doesn’t pretend that it isn’t—if you know what I mean. But the movie comes by its strong “R” rating honestly: it’s got as much violence, profanity and nudity as you can get away with (without getting a business-crushing “NC-17” rating).

We started with honesty, let’s finish with it: this movie is not getting great reviews by the vast majority of major market critics, but I give big sway to films that set themselves apart from the hundreds of “products” that come out each year. Originality and uniqueness trump lots of other elements.

So, realizing I’m all alone out here on the limb, I’m, nevertheless, giving “Sin City: A Dame To Kill For” a rare 4 out of 4 Stars.