Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

No longer what it used to be. Maybe it’s because I managed to read Damn Big Sin City before watching (I couldn’t get my hands on the comic book before part 1) but it just didn’t have that great an impact on me. In quality terms, the stories are more or less the same. The Dame to Kill For is definitely the best part of this movie. Eva Green suits her role beautifully. The new story with Joe Levitt is excellent, but Jessica Alba as the vengeful Nancy not so much. It’s not a complete disaster, but it seems badly thought out to the end and too many things go suspiciously well. Overall fine, but the moment of surprise skedaddled. (23/09/2014)

The "Sin City" stories are the best thing to come out of comics since the 1990s. No question about it. The film version is also more than worthy. I wouldn't approach the two films as separate projects, but as a single unit, and I'm very comfortable with that. Acting wise, Eva Green reigns supreme with another unmistakable variation on Angelique from Dark Shadows, Jessica Alba has gone dark and the whores from the old town have the beautiful twins, wearing the face of Jaime King, in their midst. Julia Garner with her curly head is a delight too, and who else would one want to bind but Juno Temple? (07/09/2014)

I didn't believe that anything bad could be made out of this movie, but it really happened. The new plotlines that Miller wrote for the film are not particularly interesting and may be overly stylized. Especially the new Nancy is a monster. "A dame to kill for" lacks the necessary charge and the overall stylization feels strange to me. It's like it's a different "Sin City" than the first one, different in terms of approach and the actual filming. It still has good moments, but there are too few of them. Unfortunately, most of the characters are just decorative. (09/10/2014)

More than a film proper, it is an add-on to the first one, or perhaps a "data disk", if you will. The original Sin City was incredibly stylish, innovative and pioneering in its time. The era when movies were improving on green screens and 3D effects became a trend is long gone, after all, 9 years is a long time, now all that is taken for granted. And so, the second installment looks cool at best, and that's it. The three confusingly edited stories are impersonal and you won't root for the heroes as you did before. Maybe you will admire Eva Green's and Rosario Dawson's boobs, maybe you will also like the laconic but action-oriented Mickey Rourke, but it definitely won't pin you to your seat. It is too sterile and boilerplate for that. (11/09/2014)

Slightly weaker than the previous film (what wasn't in the comics and what Frank Miller invented just for this film is really extraneous), but still a very good and stylish spectacle. It's not playing at anything, it wants to be gritty noir trash full of inner monologues, fatality, sex, and blood... and it is. (28/04/2019)