Somewhat Relevant – Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For

I consider myself a Frank Miller fan.  I really loved his 1980s comics growing up & re-reading some of them, they are still pretty awesome (especially Dark Night Returns & Daredevil Born Again).  When the Sin City comics came out they were incredible too & the first Sin City movie was absolutely shocking in it’s ability to recreate the books.  So I had high hopes for Sin City 2.  But to be honest the A Dame to Kill For story is not my favorite because as much as I like Marv, it was great for The Hard Goodbye to essentially be his only story & the whole prequel thing just feels like fan service to me.  So yeah, the source material for me is a little weak, but the film suffers from a case of “the sequels” even more than the comic did.  Somehow the CGI has gotten worse over the past ten years (maybe due to 3D stuff?), but it just felt like everything was rushed as far as the actors bothering to nail their roles down.  Everything felt phoned in.  Which I guess would have been expected if it was made immediately after the first one, but waiting nine years kinda made things seem hopeful for me.  I think what makes Sin City work (both the first movie & the books) is that you somehow care for the characters despite the sex, violence, & general depravity; but this seems to assume what people want is more sex & violence with less character development.  Maybe they are right for teenage boys, but I’m an old man now.  Where the first film felt like an homage to the noir films I love, this felt like a pastiche of them.  Knowing what Rodriguez & Miller are capable of makes things even more frustrating.  How bad is it?  I’d rather watch The Spirit any day than see this one again & unfortunately I bought the DVD.
For a better experience, try the Mickey Rooney noir Quicksand or just try anything on the Roku channel Café Noir.

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