Director Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
Starring Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin
Rated MA
Score 3.5/6
Some of Sin City’s most hard-boiled citizens cross paths with a few of its more reviled inhabitants.
Okay, considering that I don’t read a lot of graphic novels I cannot say with any degree of certainty whether or not A Dame to Kill For is a direct sequel to the Miller and Rodriguez directed 2005 movie. I only raise this point because as we all know when it comes down to franchise movies there are Sequels and Non-Sequel Sequels. Now in retrospect before sitting down to watch A Dame to Kill For I probably should have taken the time to refresh my memory with the ’05 movie, now the best I can tell at least one of the stories in A Dame to Kill For follows anything established in the ’05 movie in any chronological sense. So my best advice is just kick back relax, watch the movie and if you’ve got a 3D TV grab the Blu-ray.
It was going to be a pretty tall order for the sequel to eclipse the first the movie in a franchise, but Miller and Rodrieguez came back to the director’s and a lot of the cast from the ’05 movie are back as well, it’s the very least you can except of any sequel even if there was a nine year wait between movies. Considering the wait between movies a couple of roles from the ’05 movie recast most notably Dennis Haysbert who replaced the late Michael Clarke Duncan. The casting of Haysbert might have been a poor choice on the part of the filmmakers because in my opinion on screen he was not nearly as intimidating as Clarke Duncan would have been. That being said about Haysbert, Eva Green was brilliant and more than capable to handle her role as the femme fatale of the movie. Of the stories that were told in the movie I found that The Long Bad Night Parts I & II where the more interesting of the stories told in A Dame to Kill For
The action for this is brutal bordering on the extreme in some cases most notably in the scene involving Jessica Alba and the mirror. But considering how Miller has brought his Graphic Novel to the overall visual style of the movie it really doesn’t cross the line to become overly gory.