**Spoiler Alert**
Director: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez/Starring: James Brolin, Eva Green, Mickey Rourke, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Rosario Dawson, Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Powers Boothe, Stacy Keach and Dennis Haysbert
The creeps, grotesqueries, femme fatales and ghoulish denizens of Sin City are back in all their black and white rendered seediness. Adapted from Frank Miller's graphic novel series, the Sin City films own their own distinctive comic book look, where colors only make cameo appearances; accentuating physical characteristics, like eyes, hair or lips or blood.
The film is essentially a multi-threaded narrative with overlapping characters. In one story, a young card-stud named Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) takes on the evil Senator Roark (Powers Boothe)--a powerful Sin City low-life who is more crime-lord than public servant--in a high stakes card game. In another, a city tough known as Dwight (Josh Brolin) tries to free himself from the seductive snares of Ava (an equally seductive Eva Green); who was once his lover but is now married to a man of wealth whose death she plots. Protecting Ava is a stalwart named Manute (Dennis Haysbert, on loan from Allstate), a dangerous tough who thrashes Dwight when he catches him trying to invade Ava's home.
In yet another story is the stripper Nancy (Jessica Alba); who is haunted by the death of her lover Hartigan (Bruce Willis). A very welcome return character is Marv (Mickey Rourke); Sin City's biggest bad-ass, who doesn't have a story of his own but who allies himself with Dwight more as a means to kill boredom than as an act of altruism. That Marv tends to back the underdog and the sympathetic characters makes him an appealing figure in a city of human landfill.
As the film-noirish story-lines cross or skim one another, we meet many other colorful citizens, such as Gail (a very vamped Rosario Dawson), whose team of killer vixens reside in the most dangerous part of the city and who come to Dwight's aid. Another is Wallenquist (Stacy Keach), Ava's associate, who could be Jabba-the-Hut's sibling with his bloated face and unsightly skin.
True to noir, everyone in the film seems to be tormented by something or someone from their past save for good ol' Marv, who can't seem to stay the menacing clutches of ennui. Also, true to noir, much of the film's narration is told in voice-over by the characters themselves.
And what good would a Sin City flick be without copious servings of sex and grisly killings? As in Frank Miller's other 2014 comic book adaptation; 300: Rise of an Empire, Eva Green generously offers her nude body for audience delectation. In Sin City, there is much more of her to ogle at. The deluge of blood in the film is confined to white splashes, though some gruesomeness manages to follow Marv around, including an eyeball freshly harvested from an eye socket. That Marv, he's such a card.
My favorite line from the film was uttered by Dwight in voice-over during a scene he shares with Eva. Demonstrating an unwillingness to swallow some of Eva's lie-saturated chatter, he says, "I was born at night, but not last night." It gave me a good chuckle.
Like the first film, the second is fun in a way that's mentally undemanding which doesn't necessarily mean it's dumb. It relies heavily on style, exaggerating the pulp qualities of detective novels and the hard-boiled elements of film noir.
I enjoyed the film but I noticed its charms faded some near the end. I suppose another installment is an inevitablilty, and as I'm wont to ask rhetorically about all movie franchises: how much inspiration remains and how much tolerance do we have for more? When one considers how much skin the sirens of Sin City bear and how delightful it is to watch Marv decorate the streets with broken bones and swaths of blood, I can honestly say I wouldn't mind at least one more serving. But maybe only one.
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