Critics reviews

[The first Sin City] may not have been great, but at least it was new. But that was 2005, and never before has quite so much time passed in just nine years. That's long enough for one Spider-Man franchise to end, and another to begin and self-destruct. For better or worse, the world of graphic novel adaptations has evolved almost as drastically as the world beyond them. What was once novel has now become suffocatingly ubiquitous, and what was tolerable has now become insufferably regressive.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For doesn't have the electricity of the original, mainly because we've seen it all once before. Nothing new is really revealed here, either through story or style. But Rodriguez and Miller are completely committed to their vision, such as it is, and its ferocity can't be easily dismissed.

Meaty fists connect with faces, guns explode like nukes and panes of glass don't have a chance of maintaining structural integrity—yet for all of the amplified destruction of Robert Rodriguez's action sequel to 2005's Sin City, it never impresses. Why is it such a snooze? You don't expect to be exhausted by reams of soul-sick narration and artful chiaroscuro compositions, but that's what happens.

That's one reason the sequel's addition of 3-D is not just unnecessary but counterproductive; the original film's digital images, painstakingly photographed by Robert Rodriguez (who also directed both installments with Mr. Miller), already delivered impressive depth and density. Without any visible benefit (other than the usual projectiles that hurtle periodically toward our reflexively ducking heads), this new dimensional tweak serves only to scramble scale.

The intended result is a hyperbolic take on film noir, but its ubiquitous apathy toward death drains the film of any stakes, rendering this retread into a fruitless bacchanal of blood, bullets, and babes... It's Miller's contributions, including the script, that stall the film out. His world is noir on steroids, which precludes the most memorable and crucial elements of the noir genre. There's no danger, no patience, no true mystery to Miller's world...