Forget the title, Jake. That’s just good ole misdirection. “A Dame To Kill For” would be more in keeping with the soul of co-director Robert Rodriguez and graphic novelist Frank Miller’s pulpy-noir sequel to 2005’s “Sin City.”
Sumptuously rendered in 3-D, “Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame To Kill For” once again teases themes of vice, vengeance with voluptuous visuals — and, yes, brassy broads and an absurd femme fatale.
You won’t have to stream, rent or whatever your pleasure is these days for a refresher. The film’s partners in hard-boiled crime have spun a tale — three, actually — that reacquaints us with their first visually bold if narratively dull saga.
There are repeat offenders, chiefly the sinister Sen. Roark, played by the icily effective Powers Boothe. (Note to self: Do not beat this guy in five-card stud in front of his cronies.) Rosario Dawson returns as Gail, the boss of Old Town’s self-employed and armed to the teeth prostitutes. As she was in the original, Wounded stripper Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) remains central to the tale. Protector John Hartigan’s suicide in “Sin City” weighs on her slim, shimmying shoulders. And his portrayer, Bruce Willis, makes ghostly rounds fretting about her brooding and plans for revenge.
Dark and dazzling, “A Dame to Kill For” has all the muscular perks and some of problems of the first, including some ham-fisted dialogue. Still, it’s a more taut, more compelling, outing.
You can thank the addition of Johnny, a character not ripped from the graphic novels for offering an emotional glint to the overwhelming shadows. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the outsider-poker player with more than a card up his sleeve.
There are some honorable — within the code of pitiless town — guys: semi-sensitive brute Marv (a winning Mickey Rourke) and photographer Dwight McCarthy (Josh Brolin).
Eva Green portrays Eva Lord, the most lethal of the ladies. She has her moment with a firearm but counts on a more seductive weapon. “Sex always made you stupid,” she says at one point, sounding a bit like Eartha Kitt.
Dennis Haysbert has stepped in to the role of Manute, seeming enforcer for Mr. and Mrs. Lord.
There are a few fine turns of phrase but there’s little hardboiled elegance in Miller’s cadence. There are however plenty of exquisite images. One in particular finds Eva Lord doing a somersault into the inky black water of a swimming pool, setting it in a silver mercury motion. Small wonder Dwight says of his former lover, “Eva. Damn.”
“A Dame To Kill For” isn’t likely to create converts out of those uninterested in the pulpy side of fiction. But it more than earns its keep in terms of lavishing love, mildly ironic as well as pretty damn earnest, on pumped-up noir.
If this movie were a character in a 1950s noir, it would be a dame. And the final image would be of her backing out of a room, a gun smoking in her shaking hands, her teeth gritted in fear and pyrrhic victory.
Or as Nancy says of the place “Those it can’t corrupt, it soils.”
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bylisakennedy