‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’

Rated R for strong brutal stylized violence throughout, sexual content, nudity, and brief drug use.

Sin City came out seven years ago and I have forgotten nearly all of it except the basics. But Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is yet another glorious cinematic treatment of a noir graphic (and I do mean graphic) novel filled with gratuitous violence and sex and jammed packed with Hollywood stars.

The movie is Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain, Jim Thompson, Cornell Woolrich, and Mickey Spillane on LSD, Viagra, and whatever drug that would compel one to decapitate, stab, shoot, and de-eyeball anyone who is even remotely annoying.

If you, dear reader, are unfamiliar with the Sin City film franchise and graphic novels of the same name, it would be wise to stay away. The genre, and specifically this iteration of it, is then simply not your cup of cheap rye whiskey. On the other hand if you are a fan of (director) Robert Rodriguez and his buckets-of-blood style of film-making, schedule this one in your calendar.

Imagine a very R-rated version of Who Shot Roger Rabbit and this is what Sin City and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is like. Critics are not enamored with a Dame to Kill For but frankly, I enjoyed it.

There are three narrators in the movie telling their respective story; stories that eventually converge. Mickey Rourke, an actor who looks like he got caught up in a lawn mower, plays, under heavy prosthetics, a character that looks like he got caught up in a lawn mower. Josh Brolin plays a character that gets beat up and then looks like he got caught up in a lawn mower and then gets plastic surgery and returns looking like Josh Brolin with a bad toupee. And then there is Joseph Gordon-Levitt who plays a pretty boy who gets beat up, looks like he got caught up in a lawn mower and then…well, I won’t give that part of the plot away.

Bruce Willis reprises his role in The Sixth Sense and plays a “dead people” as in “I see dead people.”

The film is in black and white with splashes of color. (Blood comes out as a brilliant white.) Eyes have a glow-in-the-dark effect that makes you think that the contact lens budget must have been astronomical. And red lips play a prominent role, too.

And more than a few people are buck naked (male and female) in A Dame to Kill For but genitalia are conveniently kept in shadows. The lighting crew had to work hours, I am sure, to get just the right shot, don’t you know. Eva Green plays Ava a true femme fatale but mostly a naked femme fatale. Did I mention she was naked a lot in this movie? Because she is…naked…a lot…in the movie. If that does not turn your mug, there is Ray Liotta’s bare butt doing the horizontal rumba. That was added, I am sure, to appeal to those into high culture.

The femme fatales are into dominatrix attire and are deadly and dangerous which, of course, is essential in noir literature; as are great looking cars and heavy weaponry and lots of liquor guzzling.

Truth be told: it does not hold up to the first film, but it has its appeal. (And no, I am not referring to Naked Eva…well, maybe a little.)

So what is there not to like, right?

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For earns three bow ties out of five.