Sin City: A Dame To Kill For

...nine years is an awful long time to wait between sequels in the world of moviemaking. Any franchise with intent on being a franchise will exemplify this. While most people stand by the content of Star Wars on it's own, I am not certain it would be the cultural juggernaut that it is and has been is Empire Strikes Back came out in 2005. Instead, each successive Star Wars film came out with 3-4 years of it's predecessor and from Jedi until The Phantom Menace, there were countless novels, comic books and more. It kept the series in front of the public and allowed for the creation of the Othello of our generation known as Jar Jar Binks.

When Sin City came out in 2005, it was a new and fascinating way to make a film. The books were already classics from their early 1990's appearances and they still hold up today. But when they became celluloid, the style adopted straight from the page was unlike anything done to that point. This was a very literal translation of an arguably groundbreaking comic book property. It looked sleek and minimalist and yet, bold with flashes of stark reds and yellows. It modernized noir for a new generation and subsequently turned people on to the genre. What was old was now new again.

If one has believed IMDB, Sin City 3 should have been a distant memory by 2009. After the first film became legend, there were rumors of Johnny Depp climbing aboard for the next one. There was supposed to be a Sin City film trilogy in the vault by this point. Instead, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For finally made it's way to theaters over this past weekend and by all accounts, it bore the same level excitement from the public as Tora Tora announcing the arrival of Shark Attack 2. 

Before I delve into my own thoughts, I want to run down the list of likely problems that I think may have hurt this movie. The first is the obvious wait between sequels. The first movie had a ton of momentum in that it was a stylistic rebel, standing alone amongst a growing pack of factory assembled franchise films. As technology awaits no one, so much more has been done visually that A Dame To Kill For looks as great as ever, but it also suffers from "been there, done that". Had it completed the trilogy in a four-to-five year span, it had a chance to be amongst the best of all time. The space between renders it from being looked at as a proper triptych by the masses.

Secondly, it is still fairly fresh in his fans (and some former) minds when Frank Miller penned his now infamous blog post railing against Occupy Wall Street. In classic Walt Kowalski mode, Frank Miller laid waste to a groundswell of disaffected and disillusioned people who felt cheated by the system and betrayed by the representatives who have long forgotten the will of the people. Rather than offer a nuanced perspective of his respectful disagreement with their philosophies or methods, he essentially launched into a "Get off my lawn!" old man rant where he deemed the entire movement as lazy World Of Warcraft account holders who live with their parents. It was a subtle as a football to the groin. He delivered this blathering rant around the same time of his new book Holy Terror, another critical dud accused of all things bad and culturally offensive. While it can be argued that his prior body of work speaks for itself, it has been pushed into the shadows by these more recent missteps.

Finally, the cast was a gigantic misfire the second time around. While Michael Clarke Duncan's character needed to be replaced due to his passing, the swap of Clive Owen for Josh Brolin as Dwight and Devon Aoki for Jamie Chung as Miho was one that feels completely mishandled. Josh Brolin would have made a very good Dwight on his own, but Clive Owen filled every portion of that character's existence to where this recasting is baffling. In the case of Miho, the deadly mute assassin may not speak, but her actions in the original were that of legend. There seems to be no good explanation for these changes.

But none of these gripes should matter if Sin City: A Dame To Kill For is a great film. For my money, A Dame To Kill For is the best of the Sin City graphic novels. Of the seven volume series, A Dame To Kill For captures the true essence of classic film noir with the strongest grip. While there is a very heightened sense of realism in the series overall, A Dame To Kill For felt the most grounded. It read like an unearthed 1940's black-and-white film that quietly appears on Netflix and ends up being a film you can't stop telling all of your friends to see.

Much like the original Sin City, this one was a collection of vignettes from multiple books pieced together around Marv. The Dame To Kill For story is the main piece in the middle, but there are one-and-a-half other stories from the books bookending it. The story with Joseph Gordon Levitt's character was fantastic as is to be expected from him at this juncture in time. Much in the vein of Leonardo DiCaprio, he seems to be an endless well of talent with chameleon-like capability. He owns this character and his story in the film.

The other bookend is the curtain call for Nancy The Stripper from the first movie. Picking up after the death of Bruce Willis' John Hartigan, Nancy is spiraling downward into a fit of drunken depression and thoughts of revenge. As it moved further, I began to see a clear picture of her tale in the novels and the prevailing notion that I had was "This was such a great revenge tale and it is being ruined by Jessica Alba's acting." So, of all of the cast members who might have been replaced to benefit the film, she held on to her role which, in my mind, slowed the pace considerably. Marv did what he could to help, but to no avail.

Now...A Dame To Kill For. This is what I was waiting for since reading the graphic novel. This was the tale of the femme fatale and Dwight, the quintessential bad ass from the first film, falling prey to her whims. When I first heard that they were doing this story, I was over the moon with glee. As much as I love The Hard Goodbye and That Yellow Bastard from the first movie, this was going to be the story that made the series.

For the most part, the Dame To Kill For story was everything I had hoped it would be. It was the peak of the mountain of the book series on screen. From the dialogue to the story to Eva Green eating every inch of the screen, it was exactly as I saw it on the page. The problem was the switching from Clive Owen to Josh Brolin. Josh Brolin was a fine Dwight, very likely a great Dwight. But to me, taking Clive Owen out of that role is akin to taking Sylvester Stallone out of the role of Rocky Balboa. The best actor in the world may get the role, but it just doesn't feel right. I wanted to be able to sit there and lose myself in my favorite story from Frank Miller's world, but I could not stop wondering how the film would have worked with Clive Owen.

Essentially, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For is a good movie, albeit uneven and sometimes feels longer than one hour and forty minutes. The musical chairs casting decisions interrupts the narrative flow, evne nine years out. I am still glad it was made and I believe that some people's feeling on Frank Miller these days did hurt the excitement for many. Given the dismal box office returns, it is doubtful that there will be a third.