Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (2014)

SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR  (2014)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
    Mickey Rourke, Josh Brolin, Eva Green, 
    Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jessica Alba, Powers Booth,
    Rosario Dawson, Dennis Haysbert, Ray Liotta,
    Christopher Lloyd, Juno Temple, Bruce Willis
Miller and Rodriguez return to the scene of the crime - a lot of crime - with a sequel to their hard-boiled hit from 2005. Mickey Rourke reprises his role as Marv, a bullet-headed brute whose heart's in the right place, or it would be, if he had one. Josh Brolin plays the tough-guy protagonist who can never say no to a dame, especially when the dame is Eva Green. Jessica Alba plays a stripper in a sleazy club where the strippers don't really strip, but the boozed-up men down below get jacked watching them anyway. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a gambler who gets in over his head, and both he and Alba have a score to settle with a nasty piece of work called the Senator (Powers Booth, who practically breathes graphic-novel villainy). Bruce Willis turns up as Alba's ghostly guardian angel. Some of the characters are new, but it all kind of feels recycled. The narrative setup is noir by the numbers, and the equation's a mess. The visuals still look good, and as before, mayhem abounds, with a particular emphasis on severed heads and gouged-out eyes. This time around, the directors seem to have blown most of their color budget on Eva Green's lips and eyes. If that's the case, it was money well spent, a testament to Green's status as the screen's reigning viper, an actress who can make marginal pulp worth watching, and a femme fatale who's undeniably both femme and fatale.