Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Belated (and noticeably cheaper-looking) Sin City sequel A Dame to Kill For opens with the line, “This doesn’t look good at all. I’ve gone and done something again.” It’s said by Mickey Rourke’s Marv about his getting into another wacky, ultraviolent mishap, but it’s also an appropriate commentary on the downward career trajectory of co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, who helmed both the first film and this abysmal follow-up that somehow increases the lurid, gritty caricature and numbskull notions of sexuality from its already problematic predecessor.

Miller gets a lot of accusations of misogyny thrown his way nowadays. It’s completely accurate, but even ignoring the rampant display of that here, Dame’s most irritating issue is how juvenile the whole endeavour is, with the incessant Miller-scripted narration resembling bad teenage poetry – “We finish our bottle, letting the liquid darkness fill us both” – more than the film noirs that inspired his original graphic novels.

Rodriguez’s lacklustre direction and editing don’t help matters: despite the distinctive colour and costume schemes, in motion the film’s sickly green-screen visuals and flow have all the cinematic spark of a Pinterest board. Proceedings just splutter along until they eventually (and mercifully) end. The lone, fleeting bright spots amid the muck are Eva Green’s extended Isabella Rossellini riff and Powers Boothe being a total dick, but at least one of those is available in plenty of other films nowhere near as tedious and unpleasantly stupid as this.