Lacking in substance

By F.S.

THE sequel to "Sin City' has been nine years in the making. Little seems to have has changed since the cinema world's last visit to Basin City, the urban hell brought to life in blood-stained monochrome, where guns, dames and depravity rule, corrupt cops and senators gamble the night away, and underage girls dance for unscrupulous men in the shadows.

Like its successful predecessor,"Sin City: A Dame to Kill for" (aka "Sin City 2" for convenience) was directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, the writer of the neo-noir graphic novels on which both films were based. Many of the first film's cast are also back: Marv, the thug-turned-avenger played by Mickey Rourke, and the hip-swivelling Nancy (Jessica Alba), whose cause Marv takes up after the death of her protector Hartigan (Bruce Willis). Rosario Dawson once again leads the tough prostitutes from Old Town, and her old flame Dwight, the rough private investigator, is back too. This time he's played by Josh Brolin, not Clive Owen, and debates will rage as to who is better. (Mr Brolin, says your correspondent.)

It's a seductive line-up. Among the new faces is Eva Green (pictured), playing Ava, the temptress to whom Dwight has lost his heart and mind, in a role that is at once somehow mesmerising and abhorrent. Hollywood's coming man, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is entertaining as the gambler looking for revenge against the corrupt Senator Roark (Powers Boothe), whose degenerate son was killed in the first film. One of the film's best scenes comes from Ray Liotta, an actor who always plays snivelling villains so very well, as a pathetic, pasty-faced adulterer. Fans of "Back to the Future" will also enjoy a disturbing cameo from Christopher Lloyd as a drug-addicted, back-alley doctor.

Several stories intertwine, although nothing is linear, and "Sin City 2" is sometimes a prequel as much as a sequel. The gorgeous black-and-white aesthetic returns, with moments of colour—blood on the floor, the golden hair of prostitutes and the deadly green eyes of Ms Green. This is a film that yearns after its predecessor, but it is in many ways a pale imitation. The violence is more stage-managed and the script more hammy. The narration feels forced, stuffed with similes and clichés. Lines that should shock end up feeling saggy and muddled.

Ms Green,thrillingly cruel, detached and dangerous, offers atonement. She seduces the audience as she seduces her men, with blinding confidence, and keeps the film from sliding towards blandness. The plot and the script might not always be to kill for, but the dame sure is.

Despite its flaws, the unabashed mimicry of "Sin City 2” is also a reminder of a commendably original aesthetic. Although it unashamedly chooses style over substance, that style is still as gripping now as it was nine years ago. The plot's not the thing here; the nastiness—and the portrayal of it—are. Audience members are supposed to let the violence wash over them, experience sensation without feeling, shock without surprise, just as the residents of Sin City do.

Before the term "film noir" started being used to describe the dark, claustrophobic, monochrome crime thrillers of the 1940s and '50s, films like "Double Indemnity" and "The Maltese Falcon" were often referred to as melodramas. It's easy to see why this term felt applicable: think of the heightened sexual tension between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in "The Big Sleep", the theatrical brutality of Lee Marvin burning Gloria Grahame with coffee in Fritz Lang's "The Big Heat". If "Sin City 2" sometimes feels too brash, hyper-stylised and sexed-up to be a true noir, lacking the tension and pace that gave those dark films such depth, it always feels like a melodrama. It luxuriates in cliché—and even occasionally thrives off it.