Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014), R, ★★

Josh Brolin as Dwight. 

Sequels. Sequels. Any filmmaker would want to create something different from its predecessor to establish himself or herself as a person who does not want to go over the top with his style. But, Robert Rodriguez, the director, is more of a visual director than a storyteller. He creates other worlds that are redundant in our minds and psyche that no one can possibly imagine. He has been floundering with his "style-over-substance" process in his recent films, but this movie does not improve.

Like the first movie, this movie has a sub-story device that places each story out of order so I'm just going to simply give you the synopsis of the story as simply as possible.

Marv (Mickey Rourke) is thrown at the curb from a vehicle and he is amnesiac from the experience. He cannot remember what has happened in the previous night as he recalls walking in Basin City where he was born and raised and he goes to a strip club at Kadie's glancing at Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba). He also witnesses four college boys harassing a guy by dousing him with gas. You may not want to know what happens to those boys. Ummm, maybe you do.

Another story occurs when a drifter named Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to play poker against Senator Roark (Powers Boothe). At first, he is successful at playing poker by winning with a great hand, but a cop warns him that he cannot protect Johnny from Roark anymore. As Roark's goons and himself beat Johnny up severely, the renegade drifter vows revenge against him.

Dwight McCarthy (Josh Brolin) gets a call from a seductive dame named Ava Lord (Eva Green) that he does not want to deal with again. He meets her at Kadie's and Ava begs for forgiveness and protection against her husband, Damien (Marton Csokas, he always plays a villain). He gets hooked again as Ava kisses him and Manute (Dennis Haysbert) threatens him and Dwight forgives her indifferently until trouble stirs up as Dwight has rough sex with Ava and Manute brutally beats him up. Dwight, with the help of Marv and Gale (Rosario Dawson), retaliates against Manute and Damien.

The last story occurs with Nancy desperate on revenge against Senator Roark when he visits the grave of the former protector, John Hartigan (Bruce Willis). She has hallucinations that Hartigan is saying that he will never leave her and not swear revenge against Roark. That's it.

Jessica Alba as Nancy. 

I liked one and a half stories in this movie. The best story was the dame story with Dwight and Ava Lord that plays like a chess game but with sex, nudity and bloody violence that it is a hoot to see Brolin and Green go at each other with some supporting players on each side. It is a little more complex as to why Dwight is haunted by the memory of being with Ava in the past. The story with Johnny and Senator Roark is half-good because of how it is played towards the end as it gets unpredictable. The rest are not as interesting and become more like the first movie as to where the characters left off, plus it gets a little tedious and boring.

Eva Green has been in a ridiculous controversy with the MPAA as her advertised poster for the movie was her in a transparent white robe. What's the big deal? Is a head being chopped off being shown on the poster as controversial as one woman in a white robe? In my opinion, I don't think so. But, besides that, her performance is fantastic. It's been an interesting year pulling off good work at bad movies showing her different side in her career. Now, it's more shocking that she does not get naked in a movie. Haha. Brolin's fine, Mickey Rourke's all right, Powers Boothe is captivating as the villain again, and Gordon-Levitt does what he can. The rest of the cast does not do anything special.

The script is just hammered with visual subtlety and audacious colors that the story is almost entirely not there. It looks fine, but we need to care about what's going on with the characters and the story within. Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller need to watch his films again to brainstorm an original story with interesting characters. Take a look at Desperado, the first Spy Kids film and the first Sin City. It's another disappointing sequel in the canon of sequels this year.

**