CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
Film Review: ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’ Breaks No New Ground
- Bruce Willis
- Christopher Lloyd
- Dennis Haybert
- Eva Green
- Frank Miller
- HollywoodChicago.com Content
- Jeremy Piven
- Jessica Alba
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt
- Josh Brolin
- Mickey Rourke
- Movie Review
- Patrick McDonald
- Powers Boothe
- Ray Liotta
- Robert Rodriguez
- Rosario Dawson
- Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
- The Weinstein Company
CHICAGO – When the first “Sin City” (2005) was released – based on the graphic novels by Frank Miller – the conversion of a film to a noir-like comic book atmosphere was pioneering. The sequel “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” has heightened that look, but this time has much less to say.
Rating: 3.0/5.0 |
With an all-star cast, and leftover revenge factors from the first film, co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller – with a guest director credit from Quentin Tarantino – pile on the quality kills, nudity and extreme gunplay. This plays fine for the 15-year-old boy in all of us, but doesn’t challenge itself beyond that commonality, and the film suffers from a redundancy that starts to draw away even from the super hyper, black-and-white city of darkness. “Sin City” still packs a jolt to the senses, but once the first wave hits, the rest hit the shore with diminishing power.
This is a “meanwhile” plot, divided like stories in a comic book, all set in Sin City. In “Just Another Saturday Night,” Marv (Mickey Rourke) tries to remember how he got to a point on a highway, surrounded by dead men. Meanwhile, in “The Long Bad Night,” a gambler named Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) takes on Senator Roark (Powers Boothe) in a huge poker game, with his good luck charm Marcie (Julie Garner).
In the episode “A Dame to Kill For,” Dwight (Josh Brolin) tries to stay away from his former lover Ava (Eva Green), but returns to try and get her away from her husband and his massive body guard Manute (Dennis Haysbert). Finally, in “Nancy’s Last Dance,” Marv and stripper Nancy (Jessica Alba) avenge the suicide of John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) by going after his enemy, Senator Roark.
Dame Ava (Eva Green) Beguiles Dwight (Josh Brolin) in ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company