Following the success of the first Sin City movie, Sin City 2: A Dame To Kill For does its predecessor proud. This film has it all, star recognition, blood, gore, high flying theatrics, and stunning visuals.
Following the storyline from the last “Sin City” movie, the film carries on the style of having multiple stories with different characters all wrapped up into one film. The movie is centered on four people in Sin City, Marv (Mickey Rourke), Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba), Dwight McCarthy (Josh Brolin), and Johnny (Joseph Gordan-Levitt) and their stories. We start off with Frank Miller’s “Just Another Saturday Night” where we follow Marv trying to recollect what he did and who exactly he killed on that particular night. After that short scene, we are brought to the story “The Long Bad Night” to which we are introduced to Johnny, a high stakes gambler whose goal is to take down the notorious villain, Senator Roark. Afterwards, the story shifts to “A Dame to Kill For” where we follow Dwight McCarthy, a man who has demons to face, one of which is his deceitful former lover, Ava Lord (Eva Green). The last story the film tackles is “Nancy’s Last Dance” in which Nancy Callahan tries to find solace by getting revenge on Senator Roark for causing the love of her life, John Hartigan (Bruce Willis), to commit suicide, leaving her all alone.
If you were a fan of the last Sin City movie, I am happy to say that this sequel should be on your list of movies to see. To start off, I really enjoyed watching Joseph Gordan-Levitt in this film. He was charming, endearing, and he even had some funny moments, which were some of the qualities I was hoping to see by someone who plays Johnny. He really took off with this character, and even though he was only seen in a small portion of the entire movie, I left the theater remembering him probably the most. But then there is Jessica Alba and her performance. From her past films, I knew Alba was a great actress, but seeing her play this deep and complicated role, and absolutely killing it, made me really happy. Granted, she did play Nancy in the first movie, but in this sequel, Nancy as a whole has undergone so many changes that she is practically an entirely new character. It is a little hard to really fall in love with any of the characters featured in these films because each and every one of them is some sort of crook or villain, but I thought Alba did so well in her role that she was the only exception to the rule, and I loved every second of screen time she had.
But, let’s not forget some of the things that make Sin City different from all the other comic book based movies. One thing that I thought was great was the use of black and white in the film. We know that Sin City as a whole is this really intense film, but the use of the black and white color scheme just added that extra layer of intensity that ultimately makes this film even more endearing to fans. And when they add other bold colors, everything just seems to pop. Also, the style in which they switched from a more realistic visual to a comic book based graphic was something I really enjoyed. It’s these little things, in my opinion, that separates this franchise from all the other comic book based films out there.
This film hit theaters this Friday, August 22, 2014.
-Vinesh Vora
