Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

For F*** Magazine

SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR 

Director : Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez

Cast : Jessica Alba, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Brolin, Eva Green, Mickey Rourke, Rosario Dawson, Juno Temple, Jaime King, Bruce Willis, Jamie Chung, Lady Gaga, Christopher Meloni, Jeremy Piven

Genre : Action/Thriller

Opens : 8 August 2014

Rating : R21 (Violence, Nudity & Sexual Scenes) 

Running time: 102 mins

Basin CITY. A cesspool dripping with BLOOD and ALCOHOL and SEX and GRIME. A grimy CESSPOOL. NINE years after the FIRST movie, we RETURN. FOUR interlocking stories. “Just ANOTHER Saturday NIGHT” – Marv (Rourke) BEATS up PUNKS and hangs off the side of POLICE CARS. “The Long BAD Night” – Johnny (Gordon-Levitt), a self-assured young gambler, beats Senator Roark (Boothe) in a GAME of POKER. Big MISTAKE. “A DAME to Kill For” – Ava Lord (Green), sly WICKEDNESS taken the form of a WOMAN. She CASTS her SPELL upon former flame Dwight (Brolin) once more. Can he ESCAPE this enchantress’ GRASP? “Nancy’s Last DANCE” – stripper Nancy (Alba) is victim no MORE. She seeks to AVENGE the death of Hartigan (Willis), her PROTECTOR. AVENGING his DEATH. Her crosshairs are SET on Roark.

            

            This reviewer had planned to write the whole thing in the style of Frank Miller but gave up after that paragraph. The first Sin City film broke its share of ground by hewing closely to the stylisation Miller had drawn into his graphic novels, using visual effects and cinematography to replicate the striking aesthetic of the Sin City books. Black and white with occasional violent bursts of selective colour, often lapsing into animated silhouettes. Miller was initially reluctant to allow an adaptation to be filmed, but Robert Rodriguez won him over and they became co-directors on both movies. It’s nine years later and it’s not quite so novel anymore. In-between then and now we’ve had the likes of 300 and the dismal The Spirit, the latter directed by Miller himself. It’s still a great gimmick and we bet this movie is stunning in 3D (we saw the 2D version). However, any gimmick can only carry a film so far.

            The movie is clearly striving for a noir feel but so much of the Frank Miller dialogue, in reaching for a hard-boiled attitude, comes off as laughably silly. “It’s another hot night. The kind of night that makes people do sweaty, secret things,” Dwight says in voiceover. When he gets kicked in the crotch, he describes it as “an atom bomb go(ing) off between my legs.” The intensity of all the brutal, wince-inducing violence in the film ends up being undercut by the writing. “A Dame to Kill For” has as its central character an evil, manipulative, often-naked seductress. Eva Green vamps it up entertainingly as is her speciality, but there’s not much more to Ava Lord than that – she’s a textbook femme fatale. The character’s speech about the nature of insanity and evil from the graphic novel, which would have added a layer or two, is cut. “Nancy’s Last Dance”, an original story written for this film, also undoes everything the character went through in the first film. Nancy, that narrow beam of light that was able to escape the darkness of Sin City, is now just another avenging angel. “The Long Bad Night”, the other original story, is carried by Gordon-Levitt playing against Boothe but is never wholly compelling.

            The film’s ensemble cast gets to play it up in ways few other movies would let them, to mostly entertaining results. Josh Brolin, playing Dwight before the character had plastic surgery to look like Clive Owen, is convincingly tough and grizzled. Powers Boothe is a hoot as a “love to hate” villain of the most extreme variety. Gordon-Levitt sinks his teeth into playing Johnny in his transition from cocksure and feeling untouchable to wounded and seething. The afore-mentioned Green, taking the role long-linked to Angelina Jolie, does look like she’s having a ball and seems extremely comfortable with the nigh-gratuitous nudity. Speaking of showing skin, Jessica Alba famously has a no-nudity clause but given Nancy’s get-ups in this film, she might as well be naked. Her attempts at playing an angry Nancy galvanised into taking up arms against Roark are ropey at best. Bruce Willis plays a ghost. Odd sense of déjà vu there.

            In 2005, before the full-on boom of movies based on comic books and graphic novels that we’re experiencing now, Sin City was unlike anything else out there. It was striking, bold and impactful. Now, the cool factor of the film being shot on a digital back-lot with everything but the actors and key props computer-generated has subsided. As over the top as A Dame to Kill For is, it falls short of the visceral oomph the first film had. Comic book fans know Frank Miller as a writer and artist who helped define the medium with the likes of The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, but who seems to have lost his mind, judging from the atrocious likes of Holy Terror and All Star Batman and Robin. His misogynistic attitudes and obsession with dark faux-poetry are on full display in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, Robert Rodriguez serving as little more than his errand boy.

Summary: There’s no kill like overkill –Sin City: A Dame to Kill For brims with eye-catching imagery and uncompromising depictions of violence and sex, but there is little beneath its glossy, lurid surface.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Unstoppable

UNSTOPPABLE

2010

Starring: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson

Directed by: Tony Scott

20^th Century Fox

           

The first image that comes onscreen is that of white text on a black background: “INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS”. In 2001, train CSX #8888 left Walbridge, Ohio’s Stanley Yard and embarked on a 66-mile journey through northwest Ohio – with nobody at the controls. Unstoppable takes the incredible premise, runs with it, and indeed doesn’t stop.

            Rookie train conductor Will Colson (Pine) punches in on his first day at work, and immediately earns the ire of the older workers who fear that they will be displaced by Colson and those like him. As such, veteran engineer Frank Barnes (Washington), Colson’s new partner, appears not to take too well to him. Barnes is affable but perhaps a bit salty, and the two men struggle a little to work as a team.

            In the meantime, two hostlers at Fuller Yard hastily attempt to move a train out of the way to make way for an excursion train filled with schoolchildren. In their hurry, they do not connect the air brakes and the train leaves the yard for the main line unmanned. Train yardmaster Connie Hooper (Dawson) sends the hostlers after the train to stop it.

            However, the runaway train begins to go under power, and hurtles full speed ahead. This, combined with its potentially hazardous cargo of molten phenol, threaten to wreak havoc if the train reaches the more populated towns that lie right ahead of the farmlands along the line.

            Connie’s boss, Vice-President of the AWVR railway line Oscar Galvin (Kevin Dunn)  seems more concerned about the potential financial losses that could be incurred for the company, and authorizes a poorly-planned attempt to stop #777 with a lashup of two locomotives travelling ahead, while another employee attempts to board the train and enter the train cockpit, descending from a helicopter.

            The attempt goes awry, and the train continues on unfazed. Barnes realises that he and Colson could have a chance-the only chance left-at stopping the train, and hatches an ambitious and dangerous plan. The rookie and the veteran have to pool their collective wits and skill in order to stop the hurtling steel beast-while Connie and their loved ones look on in anguish as the story is covered on the news.

            Chasing after a runaway train for two hours may not seem like the best way to spend a night at the cineplex, and it probably isn’t. Unstoppable could be best described as a prolonged Discovery Channel documentary-style re-enactment, except with a much bigger budget and A-list stars. The film feels real and gritty, with the film tinted a slight greyish hue and the camera giving us a look at the uncompromisingly unglamorous Pennsylvania suburbs and industrial districts.

            While there are no big surprises to be had, a sizeable part of the movie’s appeal is how relatable the characters feel, even when flung into slightly larger-than-life scenarios. It’s a film where the heroes are blue-collar workers, not Hollywood movie stars. And it is certainly better than Tony Scott’s previous train-related film starring Denzel Washington, the mediocre remake The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3.

            Here, instead of being a dispatcher stuck in an office, Washington, along with Chris Pine, is at the controls. Denzel Washington has perhaps moved a little past his action hero days, and as an ordinary man who has been driving trains for 28 years, he is quite believable. It’s harder for Pine to shake off his screen idol looks though, but he tries his best. Both have good chemistry and forge a credible mentor-rookie relationship that is neither overly hostile nor buddy-buddy.

            Rosario Dawson is very good as the yardmaster with a potential disaster on her hands. She makes for an excellent career woman under pressure, remaining level-headed, responsible and in charge in the face of a life-or-death situation. Even though her character is stuck in the confines of the dispatch room, she makes do. Kevin Dunn is also alright as the stock corporate greaseball type who watches from his swanky office in suit and tie as the drama unfolds, and doesn’t seem to help.

            The film also contains aspects of a good old-fashioned action thriller: the intensity feels heightened yet real and the action set-pieces are staged with fine pacing and carry much weight. When the #777 bashes through the obstacles in its path, you can truly feel the heft of that machine barrelling towards the screen.

            I like seeing helicopters in action onscreen, and there are several here, including news helicopters. News footage is spliced in as the events unfold, so not only do we get a riveting first-hand view of the drama, we also see it as someone watching on TV at home might. This is surprisingly effective.

            The screenplay is also relatively tight. Nobody says more than they might in real life, and there are few superfluous lines of dialogue, as well as an appropriate smattering of brief humour. From a technical aspect, I readily bought into the film’s portrayal of the workings of locomotive transport, and at the same time, there isn’t so much techno-babble as to lose the audience entirely.

            Unstoppable succeeds mainly because it stays grounded, wheels-to-the-tracks, and puts across an exciting yet credible adventure, with a good sprinkling of emotion. That, supplemented by the judicious use of explosions.

RATING: 3.5/5 STARS

Jedd Jong Yue