Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Robert Rodriguez returns to the world of Sin City and comes up with nothing in the way of advancement. It's a batch of shorts based on the musings of Frank Miller, and not one of them offers anything better than what the original film provided. It's a mostly tedious, worthless film from a director who seems to be running out of original ideas. Much of the cast returns, including Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis, even though their characters died in the first movie. In the case of Rourke, his Marv segments are prequels, based on graphic novels that took place before his character got the electric chair. As for Willis, think The Sixth Sense. It's a whole lot of people driving around a lot in a black and white film doing those deliberately paced, film noir voiceovers. What was once visually breathtaking has become visually blah—sort of like Mel Gibson—and none of the stories that comprise A Dame to Kill For merit interest. The film plays like a batch of outtakes from the first movie slapped together and put on display nearly a decade later. It's also the second time this year that Eva Green has given a spectacular villainous performance in a film adapted from a Miller graphic novel that totally sucks around her (the first one being 300: Rise of an Empire). Rodriguez doesn't have any films in major states of development for the future. Perhaps this is a good thing. He's better than the majority of the last decade has shown, and he's certainly better than Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.