Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

My relationship with film is best illustrated by the fact that I managed to avoid it for almost 8 years after its premiere. Rodriguez has never been among my favorite directors, and even in moments of weakness, I only gave him a maximum of 3 stars, and with the passing years, I feel that I am moving further away from his work. Therefore, today I am much stricter when it comes to his films. Since the first trip to Sin City, Rodriguez has not advanced anywhere, and he hasn't understood anything or learned anything new. In this film, we can once again witness the failure of narrative techniques and the pitiful inability to work with characters. The film quickly becomes an unintentional parody of itself. Miller's exaggeratedly affected comic book vision needed cinematic cultivation and sensitive development of its world, not mechanical takeover and cramping literalness. Rodriguez did not become a visionary, but rather a discoverer and advocate of a typical dead-end in filmmaking. If it weren't for the fetishistically seductive visuals and the presence of Eva Green, who lends her deceptive femme fatale with confidence and wit like no other actress, I would rate it even lower. Overall impression: 35%. (27/12/2021)

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)

Slightly weaker than the previous film (what wasn't in the comics and what Frank Miller invented just for this film is really extraneous), but still a very good and stylish spectacle. It's not playing at anything, it wants to be gritty noir trash full of inner monologues, fatality, sex, and blood... and it is. (27/04/2019)

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)

Sin City 2 didn't impress me much. The visuals are again properly dark and original, adding two distinctive and perfect characters like Eva Green, whose tits haven't changed at all since 300: Rise of an Empire, and the very talented and perfect Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who really enjoyed his role and I'm with him, he just could have been given more space. What I see as a minus is the lack of blood, these white splashes don't impress much and overall I didn't have as much fun here as I did with the first one, so Sin City 2 doesn't take 4* from me. 65% (24/09/2014)