Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Here’s the deal – when you make a film with a quality moral center in which every single cel is a gorgeous display of bold, brash or intrigue, then you get to dress every last female in her underwear or less. On the other hand, when your moral compass is off and your very striking film seems … incomplete, then I get to talk about the cornucopia of sexism in the Frank Miller/Robert Rodriguez world.

What’s that? A female character almost wearing real clothes? WTF? Quick, loosen that blouse. At least get some quality décolletage up in that frame. If I may — I counted, and of the dozen or so female characters in the film, exactly one was allowed to wear clothes. Real clothes, like you’d find on actual living woman in public at least two miles from the nearest stripper pole. Oh sure, there was a femme fatale or five and a whole gang of armed lingerie models among the not men. Yet this whole Sin City world –not unlike the one in Sucker Punch— seems anchored in an immature adolescent fantasy, one where every woman comes across as the cover shot of Victoria’s Secret Soldier of Fortune.

If I come off as indignant, there’s good reason – the original Sin City was my favorite film of 2005. Irreverent, shocking, sexy … it was like an Italian co-ed exchange student inappropriately dressed for her first day of school in rural Utah. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is more like the same girl making a poor attempt at the school uniform – yeah, she’s still sexy, but we’ve seen it, and seen it better.

The guiding force of this effort is a black widow, Ava (Eva Green). She’s naked a lot, which looks fantastic in the realm of the black & white Sin City backdrop. Problem is she’s a villain just like the other major player of Sin City 2, Senator Roark (Powers Boothe), and there’s nowhere to go with comic book villains; they are what they are. And the reason you have to rely on them is this time around the heroes have little to offer — Marv was the role that revived Mickey Rourke‘s career. He returns here as little more than tool. Dwight (Josh Brolin, a poor replacement for the original Clive Owen) beats Marv to the punch as the first tool wielded on screen and almost makes up for it by getting thrown naked backwards through a second story window … twice. Wait. No, it doesn’t. Hartigan (Bruce Willis) is a one-note fatherly ghost. Nancy (Jessica Alba) has some semblance of role range here, which happens when she’s not pole dancing on stage. Unfortunately, pole dancing on stage represents 80% of Jessica’s screen time. Finally, there’s Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who makes a lousy hero and an early exit.

There are some sequels so bad they actually detract from the original. Another 48 Hrs., The Matrix Revolutions, Predator 2 all come to mind. Sin City 2 is a pretty film – it still has that wonderful use of bicolor with just the occasional polychromatic touch-up to highlight a coat, blood, or somebody’s fabulous rack — so it’s still a cut above similar films. But this is easily my biggest disappointment of 2014, and as with those tragic re-misfires before it, I’m now sorry I made such a big deal of the original Sin City.

The vision of Frank Miller returns bold
Easy to guess why the first run withhold
The new sleazy claim
Condescendingly lame
Now, the misogyny just leaves me cold

Rated R, 102 Minutes
D: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
W: Frank Miller
Genre: Films for 14-year-old boys
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: 14 year-old boys
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Feminists