After nine years, the reward was definitely not worth the wait. Walking out of the theater
one felt like Kurt Russell in Tombstone, shouting “No” repeatedly when he was about
to kill Powers Boothe, who ironically enough plays the Senator Roarke in this fall from
grace of a film.
The most obvious struggle was structural, or plainly put, the story telling. The point
of view was passed around and intertwined enough times to be obviously bothersome.
It was too much juggling between the characters letting them run wild throughout the
storylines. As a universal crowd favorite, Marv was all about in this picture and was
rarely off camera, almost to a detriment. Considering that he was executed during the
conclusion of his first appearance in the comics (and in the first movie) adding to the legend, it
was a trial by fire sorting out his timeline before his infamous setup with Goldie.
As one tried to keep track of the storylines, he was always there creating seemingly unnecessary
As one tried to keep track of the storylines, he was always there creating seemingly unnecessary
connections between all of the leads. In the first Sin City, Marv used revenge, the loss of
a love to justify killing his way to the top of a criminal syndicate. The plot of the second
was pretty much the same, but this time Marv’s reasoning behind taking out the trash...
he had nothing else better to do.
After the first segment that starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the fun and lucky gambler
Johnny, you were left with the trademark Frank Miller/Rodriguez-Tarantino feeling of
awaiting the character’s grand finale.
Marv takes the reins again, trading an extraordinarily, insanely amount of inner-
monologue with Josh Brolin as Dwight (I’m not kidding, Alba, Brolin, Gordon-Levitt, Willis
and Rourke through the whole entire movie, inner monologue. Not one second of
silence, it’s just all of them talking to themselves). We don’t see Johnny again for an
hour.
Anthology stories like this work better when the stories are told from their beginning to
conclusion, one at a time. Examples including Peter Jackson’s films, the aforementioned
Tarantino films, Kevin Smith’s films, even shows like How I Met Your Mother executed
these same methods of storytelling with better precision and creativity. Miller and
Rodriguez’s most recent execution, attempting to match that kind of longevity in the box
office, it was quite shoddy.
On the plus side, the acting in this film was solid (for the most part). Eva Green was a
great choice as the femme fatale Ava Lord. Mickey Rourke had a blast as Marv. Clive
Owen was another reason why the bar so set so high in the first, but the Dwight and Marv
team-up scenes were enjoyable to a certain extent.
Giving Jessica Alba the keys to her own segment towards the back end was exactly what
you think could go wrong in that situation. Her nudity was not a must for the film to
succeed... but in contrast to the amount of skin Ava Lord displayed, it seemed out of
place considering Little Nancy Callahan’s profession, and her “fall into darkness.”
For portraying a seductive dancer, in an “R” rated film, with other scenes that went so far,
Alba wore a lot of clothing. Not a complaint, just another weird aspect of the film.
FINAL WARNING: The voiceovers are relentless and too many times they spelled it
out as opposed to letting the actions of the characters speak for themselves. While the
voiceovers were a prominent feature in the original it feels really overused here.
The look of the picture felt just like a continuation, no differences from the original.
The now repetitive accenting of the colors felt too played out this go around, overused it
added to the durative feel of this picture.
This was an aggravatingly disappointing follow-up to one of the classic comic book films
of all time. It dragged like a inchworm albeit it was only a hour and 45 minutes (and the
film resolved its best storyline by the hour mark). I give it four and a half batarangs out
of a possible ten.
No comments:
Post a Comment