Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

01 Wednesday Oct 2014

Tags

Action, Basin City, Corruption, Drama, Frank Miller, Guns, Jessica Alba, Joseph-Gordon-Levitt, Josh Brolin, Kadie's Bar, Marv, Mickey Rourke, Murder, Old Town, Review, Robert Rodriguez, Senator Roark, Sequel, Swords

D: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller / 102m

Cast: Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rosario Dawson, Bruce Willis, Eva Green, Powers Boothe, Dennis Haysbert, Ray Liotta, Christopher Meloni, Jeremy Piven, Christopher Lloyd, Jaime King, Juno Temple, Stacy Keach, Marton Csokas, Jude Ciccolella, Jamie Chung, Julia Garner

Basin City, night. Marv (Rourke) is having trouble remembering what’s happened to him as he surveys the wreckage of two cars and the bodies of two young men lying in the road. As the night’s events become clearer, he remembers an encounter with four young men, and being shot by one of them. Heading for the Projects, two of the young men attempt to ambush Marv but they’re stopped by unseen assailants. Marv kills them both and chases the other two down, bringing his memory full circle.

At Kadie’s Bar, a poker game in a back room is presided over by Senator Roark (Boothe). Johnny (Gordon-Levitt), a drifter, invites himself into the game and wins big, earning the enmity of the Senator. Later, Johnny has the fingers of his lucky hand broken by the Senator, and is shot in the leg as well. Johnny swears revenge but Roark is dismissive of the threat, believing himself invincible because of the power he wields.

Elsewhere in Basin City, private eye Dwight (Brolin) receives a phone call from someone he’d hoped he’d never hear from again, old flame Ava (Green). They meet, and she reveals she is in an abusive marriage, and is fearful for her life. When she’s forced to leave by Manute (Haysbert), who works for her husband, Dwight decides to find out more. He goes to Ava’s home but is caught by Manute and viciously beaten up. Back at his apartment, Dwight receives another visit from Ava and they have sex, but again Manute arrives and takes her away. Enlisting Marv’s help, Dwight returns to Ava’s home, where he kills her husband, Damien (Csokas), but soon realises he’s been set up by Ava who shoots him. Marv (who’s blinded Manute in a vicious fight between the two) rescues Dwight and they get away to Old Town. Helped by old friend Gail (Dawson), Dwight recovers and enlists her help in seeking revenge on Ava. They return to Ava’s home to settle matters once and for all.

Johnny finds a doctor (Lloyd) to help him with his injuries and he returns to the poker game where once again he beats Roark. His victory is short-lived as Roark turns the tables on him once more. While Roark reclaims his standing, Nancy (Alba), a stripper at Kadie’s, plots to kill him in revenge for the death of Hartigan (Willis), a cop she cared about. But Nancy drinks too much and hasn’t the courage to act on her anger. In a fit of rage, she disfigures herself, which leads Marv to offer his help. Together they make their way to Roark’s estate, where Nancy comes face to face with the Senator.

Arriving nine years after its predecessor, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For retains many of the earlier movie’s characters, the same visual approach, hard-boiled dialogue and non-linear storytelling, and extreme bouts of violence. As a companion piece, the movie works well, but there’s something missing from the experience: anything new.

The first movie worked precisely because it was new. The mixture of live action and CGI, allied to heavily stylised violence and Frank Miller’s nihilistic characters, was, in its own way, a refreshing change from other violent dramas (and thankfully proved hard to duplicate). The problem here is that Miller and Rodriguez have stuck too closely to the original formula, leaving Sin City: A Dame to Kill For looking and feeling like a greatest hits version of the first movie, rather than a bona fide sequel. It’s disquieting to realise as you watch the movie that everything’s the same, and with that realisation it also becomes clear that this outing is going to lack the verve and complexity of Miller and Rodriguez’s first collaboration. The tone is the same and there’s no variation.

Worse still is the lack of investment in certain characters, notably Johnny who we don’t really care about, despite his opposition to Senator Roark, and Nancy, whose bitter reluctance to act against the Senator seems forced rather than natural. Twice she has him in her sights while performing a routine, and both times she fails to pull the trigger. Credible? No; and nor is Marv appearing in each storyline, and helping out in the same fashion on two separate occasions (it’s also problematical that he died in the first movie – why is he in this one?) Hartigan returns as a ghost but makes almost no impact on Nancy’s story, while Gail and her team of female assassins are treated like bystanders.

Even the cast can’t raise this one from its slumbers, though Green makes the biggest impression, making Ava one of the most deceitful and alluring femme fatales to be seen for some time (she’s naked quite a lot as well, and shot in a fetishistic fashion that is reserved only for her). Brolin subs for Clive Owen, and Boothe steps out from behind Rutger Hauer to play the movie’s main villain with aggressive panache.

Ultimately, the stories aren’t strong enough, or interesting enough, to resonate beyond a first viewing, and by the end, even the violence has lost its charm, becoming repetitive and – sadly – unexciting. What’s left is an uneven mix that doesn’t know how to straighten itself out or make itself more coherent.

Rating: 5/10 – below par in pretty much every department with just enough being done to make the movie look better than it actually is, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is a sequel that tries hard to recreate the magic of its forerunner, but never really succeeds; if a further entry is planned, Messrs Miller and Rodriguez will need to spend more time at the drawing board before committing anything to film.

Machete Kills (2013)

27 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Action, Amber Heard, Antonio Banderas, Charlie Sheen, Danny Trejo, Drug cartel, La Chameleon, Lady Gaga, Luther Voz, Machete, Mel Gibson, Nuclear missile, Review, Robert Rodriguez, Thriller

D: Robert Rodriguez / 107m

Cast: Danny Trejo, Mel Gibson, Michelle Rodriguez, Amber Heard, Demian Bichir, Sofia Vergara, Charlie Sheen, Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, Cuba Gooding Jr, Walton Goggins, Vanessa Hudgens, William Sadler, Tom Savini, Jessica Alba

Arriving three years after its title character’s debut, Machete Kills opens with Machete (Trejo) and Agent Sartana (Alba) intercepting a weapons deal between US soldiers and members of a Mexican drugs cartel. When their plan goes awry and Sartana is killed, Machete finds himself approached by President Rathcock (Sheen) to return to Mexico and find and, if necessary kill, cartel boss Mendez (Bichir). Mendez is threatening to launch a nuclear missile on Washington D.C.; if Machete stops him, all of Machete’s past sins will be forgotten and he will be granted immediate US citizenship.

In Mexico, Machete finds himself captured by Mendez, who reveals he’s being backed by a mystery American who’s provided him with the missile. This turns out to be Voz (Gibson). Machete escapes with Mendez in tow and they head for the border but not before Mendez has put out a bounty on both their heads to the tune of $20 million. With pretty much all of Mexico after them – plus face-changing super assassin La Chameleon (Goggins, Gooding Jr, Gaga, Banderas) – and the added problem of keeping Mendez alive (his heartbeat is connected to the missile’s arming device; if he dies the missile will fire), Machete has to get Mendez over the border and to Voz’s hideout in order to stop the missile from being fired. Voz, though, proves to be a megalomaniac who can see the future (oh, and he’s also built an “ark” in space – once the world is destroyed by the nuclear missiles he’s got primed to be launched, and the dust has cleared, he and his followers will return to Earth and start a new, better society; there, got all that?) With the help of old friend Luz (Rodriguez), Machete attacks Voz’s HQ just as he’s having his launch party. Will Machete save the day? Will Voz’s evil plan be thwarted? Will there be a higher death toll than most Arnold Schwarzenegger movies from the Eighties? (If you’ve answered yes to all three, then give yourself a pat on the back.)

As deliberately and casually over the top as its predecessor, Machete Kills is a riotous mix of primary colours, ear-crunching sound effects, limb-slicing violence, boys-with-toys style hardware, visceral humour, cheesy dialogue, unsubtle in-jokes, scantily clad gun-toting females, and the repository of Mel Gibson’s worst ever screen performance. Rodriguez’s kitchen sink approach to the material works well over all, and he certainly wins points for inventiveness, but after ninety minutes the lack of subtlety begins to wear very thin indeed. Fortunately he’s helped out by a committed cast who all seem to relish the chance to kick back and go with the absurdity of it all. Except for Gibson, who plays Voz as if he were a villain in a Bond movie: all urbane chat and modish amusement. He’s about as convincing as cottage cheese on steak. That said, Trejo is still an awkward watch, his acting chops as wayward as a leaf in the wind, but it’s all about his physical presence, and Rodriguez uses him cleverly throughout, making Machete almost a force of nature.

For fans of the character, Machete Kills will reinforce their love for the character, though newcomers may wonder what all the fuss is about. Some of the early scenes lack pace, and Rodriguez stops one too many times to introduce new characters or reintroduce old ones. The action scenes are fun on an arcade game level, and give rise to all manner of violent, gory deaths (if I mention the words “intestines” and “helicopter blades” you might get an idea of how inventive Rodriguez is in this department). Pretty much every woman in the movie is required to wear figure hugging and/or flesh-revealing clothing, including Lady Gaga (unfortunately, it doesn’t work for her as much as it does for, say, Sofia Vergara); sexist it may be but it’s as nothing compared to the casual racism that runs like a disquieting undertone from beginning to end (is American citizenship really such a great prize for a Mexican?). Of course, there is a degree of irony here too, but it’s not quite as prominent as, say, Vergara’s crotch gun.

Away from Trejo and Gibson, the performances are much better, with Bichir a highlight as the schizophrenic Mendez: one moment a raging psychopath who thinks nothing of having his ward Cereza (Hudgens) killed as an example, the next a compassionate rebel determined to bring down the cartels. Bichir switches between the two personalities with ease, often in the same line of dialogue, and his performance bolsters the movie every time he’s on screen. Rodriguez, Alba and Savini reprise their roles from Machete, and of the four actors portraying La Chameleon, it’s Gooding Jr who impresses most.

At the beginning of the movie there’s a trailer for a forthcoming Machete feature, Machete Kills Again… In Space. It appears to be a joke trailer but by the movie’s end it’s more of an accurate prediction of where Machete is heading next. If and when that movie appears, let’s hope there’s a sharper script and less erratic direction. With most, if not all, of Rodriguez’s movies there’s a feeling that he’s trying to bombard the audience with all sorts of diversions and trickery so that we don’t see the holes and the flaws in the plot or the storyline. It’s evident here, and while Machete Kills is entertaining on a superficial level, the fact that there is no depth to it at all doesn’t help things.

Rating: 7/10 – a mixed bag (as usual) from Rodriguez with some stand-out moments and a firm sense of how ridiculous it all is; a popcorn movie for those who like their popcorn drenched in blood and free from logic.