Review #816: 'Sin City: A Dame to Kill for' (2014)

Taking an alarming nine years to reach the screen following it's successful predecessor, Sin City (2005), Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller bring back the filth-ridden, black-and-white mean streets of Basin City. The first film was a modest success both critically and commercially, but A Dame to Kill For underwhelmed at the box-office, and despite boasting another stellar cast, it's not difficult to see why. The likes of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Brolin, and, most notably, Eva Green, have been brought in to freshen things up, but the film treads very similar grounds to what came years earlier, and the drama seems emptier now than it did before.

Like last time, the film tells various intertwining stories. Marv (Mickey Rourke) wakes up in a car wreck surrounded by the dead bodies of frat boys. Unable to remember how he got there, he begins to re-trace his steps. A cocky young gambler, Johnny (Gordon-Levitt) arrives in town and immediately starts fleecing a joint of all it's money. Insisting that he is allowed into the high stakes game with his good luck charm Marcie (Julia Garner), Johnny finds himself pitted against the corrupt Senator Rourke (Powers Boothe), who he wipes the floor with. He is warned to leave town quickly lest he feel the Senator's wrath, but the arrogant young man decides to treat Marcie to a night on the town instead.

Years before he had his face operated on to become Clive Owen in the first film, Dwight (now played by Josh Brolin) is a private investigator who we first meet spying on businessman Joey (Ray Liotta) and his young lover Sally (Juno Temple). He is called on by his old flame Ava Lord (Green) who claims she is being abused by her husband (Marton Csokas) and his bodyguard Manute (Dennis Haysbert, replacing the late Michael Clarke Duncan). Dwight cannot get her out of his head and employs Marv to help him on his rescue mission. Meanwhile, distraught at the suicide of John Hartigan (Bruce Willis), stripper Nancy (Jessica Alba) is drinking heavily and seeks revenge on the man who drove her former lover to kill himself, Senator Rourke.

Nine years ago, Sin City was, visually, a jaw-dropping exercise in using real actors against a green screen background. Nowadays, this effect is used commonly, even in TV shows, so it's a testament to Rodriguez (working as cinematographer) that the film still looks absolutely splendid. Beneath the beauty of it's exterior lies something all the more hollow, as the actors - the men and women - compete for the crown of being the hardest bastard with the graveliest voice. With such deliberately blunt dialogue, the film is basically made up of scenes of people acting tough to one another, usually resulting in machine-gun fire or somebody being punched through a window.

The cast all deliver though, and although it's nice to see Powers Booth get the screen-time he deserves (his Cy Tolliver in HBO's Deadwood is still one of the my all-time favourite TV villains), Eva Green walks away with the movie. Embodying all the traits of the great screen femme fatales, she is allowed to go further than the stars that came before for her and be that more sexier, revealing all to Rodriguez's obviously admiring camera. She seduces every man she comes across, including Christopher Meloni's lovestruck cop, who fall at her knees, and it's not hard to see why. Green single-handedly saves this film from becoming a nihilistic and empty exercise in violence, which was fun and fresh the first time around, but with nine years of preparation, you would expect more.


Directed by: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eva Green, Powers Boothe, Dennis Haysbert, Rosario Dawson, Bruce Willis
Country: Cyprus/USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #652: 'The Killer Inside Me' (2010)

The Killer Inside Me, a brutally violent neo-noir from British director Michael Winterbottom, raised hell at Sundance, sending audiences into frenzies of disbelief and light-headedness. Of course, as usual with premature festival outrage, the film is really not as appalling as the uproar would have led you to believe. There is one truly sickening scene - as gut-wrenching as any burst of violence I've seen on screen - but, the real tragedy is that this insistence on portraying it so graphically actually takes the focus away from what is a very stylish, if tonally uneven, pulp thriller. Although Winterbottom has juggled genres and styles with relative ease in his previous work, mainly to positive results, perhaps his inexperience with tackling a project so deeply rooted in Americana leads to the film's downfall.

Small-town deputy sheriff Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) is sent to warn off prostitute Joyce (Jessica Alba), who is having a dangerous affair with the son of construction tycoon Chester Conway (Ned Beatty). After realising they have the same violent sexual tastes, they begin a love affair and devise a plan to extort $10,000 from Conway, as Lou believes Conway to be responsible for the death of his brother. Unbeknownst to Joyce, Lou, despite his pleasant demeanour, is a violent sociopath, and after Lou beats Joyce to death with his bare hands and runs with the money, county attorney Howard Hendricks (Simon Baker) is called in to investigate. So Lou is forced to cover his tracks while he dotes on his fiancee Amy (Kate Hudson).

Pulp writer Jim Thompson was possibly the grimmest writer of his ilk, and The Killer Inside Me is widely thought of as his best work. I have not read the novel, so I am unaware as to how Lou Ford is written, but here he is a blank but undeniably fascinating character. He is a character that always seems in control, even when he seems surprised at just what he is capable of. Yet for someone seemingly so clinical at killing, he's not very good at it. His extortion plan is full of holes that could lead back to him, and it doesn't take long for Hendricks to figure him out. Often a glance or a word will make you wonder if he even understands himself or anything he is doing. Casey Affleck is a fine actor, and his Lou Ford is intimidating. Even though he's slightly built and his voice is a high-pitched drawl, he is a scary character to spend 90 minutes with, and he even surpasses his performance in The Assassination of Jessie James By the Coward Robert Ford (2007), of which I felt he was robbed of an Oscar.

Winterbottom wisely steers away from any psychological analysing of Ford, only hinting at childhood abuse (but not the way you would think), and glimpses of his intellect. Instead it makes you ponder this hideous character, and stay with him (but not necessarily root for) throughout the duration of the film. But it's Winterbottom's approach that is the problem here, blending a mixture of styles that causes the film to seem contrasting and haphazard. There are moments of pure noir - headlights approaching in the dust, characters sat in empty diners, cynical narration - and these scenes are at ease with the sleaze of the film's focus, but often it will kick in with some banjos at inappropriate moments that caused me to wonder whether I should be taking the film seriously. When it does take itself seriously, it's often inspired, but the final scene is so badly handled that I did wonder if a different director with more experience in the field would have made a much better film.


Directed by: Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Ned Beatty, Elias Koteas, Tom Bower, Simon Baker, Bill Pullman
Country: USA/Sweden/UK/Canada

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie