Wow. A lot can happen in nine years. Especially to a city. It can rise up to become a bustling metropolis or crumble and fall into a dilapidated wasteland.
Unfortunately for Sin City, it has become the latter.
When the original film came out in 2004, near the start of the of the current comic boo movie boom, it was one of the most faithful adaptations and Rodriguez captured its look perfectly so it made you feel like you were watching a comic book on screen.
Sin City: A Dame To Kill For might still have the look but some of the dialogue and performances are as flimsy as the dime store pulp novels that inspired these stories.
If you haven't seen the original film recently or read any of the graphic novels, A Dame To Kill For may prove to be every bit as confusing as trying to pick up Doctor Who having missed a couple of episodes.
Despite being a sequel, the majority of the stories take place before the events of the first film thus allowing Mickey Rourke's character Marv to return along with several others who have been recast for a variety of reasons.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Powers Boothe deliver two of the best performances, and are the most comfortable with the style and content of their story which is the only decent new addition to the canon.
Nine years on, and having done very little inbetween, Jessica Alba remains the weak link and is unconvincing as the stripper turned vengeance seeker. If she needed tips on how to play a convincing femme fatale, she only had to watch the sultry, salacious Eva Green who for the second time this year, walks away being the best thing about a sub-standard Frank Miller comic book movie.
"Walk down the right back alley in Sin City and you can find anything". Unfortunately it looks like they took a wrong turn as the result is a film that may look like a carbon copy but lacks the hard-boiled grit and impact of the original.
2 stars
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