Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

More than a film proper, it is an add-on to the first one, or perhaps a "data disk", if you will. The original Sin City was incredibly stylish, innovative and pioneering in its time. The era when movies were improving on green screens and 3D effects became a trend is long gone, after all, 9 years is a long time, now all that is taken for granted. And so, the second installment looks cool at best, and that's it. The three confusingly edited stories are impersonal and you won't root for the heroes as you did before. Maybe you will admire Eva Green's and Rosario Dawson's boobs, maybe you will also like the laconic but action-oriented Mickey Rourke, but it definitely won't pin you to your seat. It is too sterile and boilerplate for that. (11/09/2014)

I didn't believe that anything bad could be made out of this movie, but it really happened. The new plotlines that Miller wrote for the film are not particularly interesting and may be overly stylized. Especially the new Nancy is a monster. "A dame to kill for" lacks the necessary charge and the overall stylization feels strange to me. It's like it's a different "Sin City" than the first one, different in terms of approach and the actual filming. It still has good moments, but there are too few of them. Unfortunately, most of the characters are just decorative. (09/10/2014)

No longer what it used to be. Maybe it’s because I managed to read Damn Big Sin City before watching (I couldn’t get my hands on the comic book before part 1) but it just didn’t have that great an impact on me. In quality terms, the stories are more or less the same. The Dame to Kill For is definitely the best part of this movie. Eva Green suits her role beautifully. The new story with Joe Levitt is excellent, but Jessica Alba as the vengeful Nancy not so much. It’s not a complete disaster, but it seems badly thought out to the end and too many things go suspiciously well. Overall fine, but the moment of surprise skedaddled. (22/09/2014)

Pointless recycling of what we've seen before, but without any of the dramaturgical lightness and plot momentum of the unrivalled first film. The scenes are connected by rather flimsy bridges and the film as a whole doesn't escalate, surprise or even shock with a single bit of entertaining brutality, the kind the first one was packed to bursting with. The only thing that they managed to retain is the irresistible atmosphere of "sin and moral depravity" and the hilarity of Rourke's character, who’s amazing and could have carried the whole thing on his shoulders alone much, much better. This is just a dud, it can’t be denied... 50% (10/10/2015)

The second to Sin City is again full of very suggestive and imaginative visuals, but story-wise it is noticeably weaker than its predecessor, which had the primacy of the first (and therefore novel) film. From the cast, the one who impressed me was Eva Green, who enjoyed her role properly. In short, a sequel that didn't need to be made at all, but then again I would be lying if I said that the screening was a waste of time. (22/09/2014)