Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR
(R, Dimension Films, 102 mins., theatrical release date: August 22, 2014)

I saw the original Sin City theatrically, five times. I spent quintuple the matinee price to see this film over and over back in 2005 because I legitimately thought I was watching a bona fide cult classic and personal favorite movie. It was a gas each and every viewing, not simply a slavish recreation of the Frank Miller graphic novel series but a juicy, disreputable, turbo-charged dynamo of a film which made Mickey Rourke iconic again, quenched my then-insatiable thirst for Rosario Dawson, boasted several kick-ass performances from a bravura all-star cast (Elijah Wood, Brittany Murphy, Rutger Hauer, Clive Owen, Powers Boothe, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Madsen, etc,), and proved that Robert Rodriguez was invaluable in translating the material to the screen. Compare it to Miller's solo directorial work on The Spirit if you want to see a half-assed retread which needed the Tex-Mex maverick's touch.

Nine years later, the sequel comes out to an under-performing indifference both critically and commercially compared to the still-searing original. I will always love the first Sin City dearly, and I have to admit there are moments of beauty in the follow-up which justify the belated pacing of the sequel. It's certainly not a DTV hack job compared to, say, the not-so-promising preview of Hot Tub Time Machine 2 which opened the screening (disclosure: I never liked the first one all that much, John Cusack be damned). But I don't see myself going back for more with Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. And it's embarrassing me to say that given how devout I was in regards to the original.

Something seems wrong...it's not as cohesive here as it was the first time around. The original wove three disparate stories (four if you count the Josh Hartnett interludes, all of them isolated effectively on home video) into a solid collection of hyper-masculine noir, but the effect here kind of seems slapdash. The framework is basically the same, but there is a lack of real momentum. When one story stops for another, and resumes later only to squitter towards a bit of a hard-boiled but soft-headed finale, it's not engrossing, merely the worst definition of "episodic." Even the chronology had me wondering where events fit in with the original, especially considering Marv died in the electric chair for exacting revenge on the cardinal brother of Senator Roark.

Marv does return for the trio of new tales set in the indefatigably corrupt Basin City, but only as a glorified supporting character. Indeed, two of the stories reduce him to wise-cracking mercenary instead of the sardonic, sadistic, soulful persona Rourke embodied in "The Hard Goodbye." The titular "A Dame to Kill For," the lone holdover from Miller's classic Sin City tomes, has him coming to the rescue of temperamental P.I. Dwight McCarthy (a recast but raring-to-go Josh Brolin), who makes the near-fatal mistake of trusting his duplicitous, dangerously seductive ex Ava Ford (Eva Green). And "Nancy's Last Dance" picks up the story of Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba), the petite barroom dancer who was twice kept safe from Senator Roark's pedophile son by hopelessly honest cop John Hartigan (Bruce Willis, here on a phantom payday), who then committed suicide to quell Roark's inevitable wrath. Marv becomes an ally to Nancy after her repressed thirst for vengeance drives her to alcohol and self-mutilation, but his function remains the same as a human wrecking ball to smash past faceless security squads.

Only in "The Long Bad Night" does Marv take his place in the shadows of Kadie's Club Pecos per usual, as it instead focuses on Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the over-his-head gambler who pays his own ultimate price for showing up Senator Roark at the poker table. Gordon-Levitt has proven himself more than just a pro, but a real MVP in modern cinema, his fluorescent swagger irresistibly waiting to be crippled by the equally reliable Powers Boothe, the only returning cast member whose presence Rodriguez & Miller expand upon with any palpable joy. But the weight of Johnny's vendetta against the venom-blooded Roark is undermined by so much studied cool and the distracted choice to break up the segment for the whole of "A Dame to Kill For." It worked much better in the original with Hartigan's humiliating odyssey.

And Eva Green, fresh off another Miller-related sequel (300: Rise of an Empire), lives up to that title with brazen, buck-naked aplomb. Like Gordon-Levitt's presence does in the preceding/succeeding story, Green takes a stock character and juices it up with enough of an element of surprise to her performance to make the even the gristle of the steak sizzle. Whereas Brolin is compelling, yet forced into reciting reams of hyperbolic, underwritten anti-hero angst, so much so that the chasm between the bullish Brolin and the rascally Clive Owen parts wider than when Moses split the sea. At least he develops a wild chemistry with Green, which is all but lost the moment Dwight ends up in Old Town with hooker Valkyrie flame Gail (Rosario Dawson, bless her fishnet lingerie).

I'm still feeling let down, somehow. Maybe respective troublemakers Rodriguez & Miller have drained a lot of the sick humor from the original and have gotten po-faced portentous in going for darker character arcs and themes. Jessica Alba was brighter in her brief scenes with Marv ("Who's the babe?") from the first film than she is anywhere in "Nancy's Last Dance." She doesn't totally embarrass herself playing a sneering, stitched-up fallen angel as I feared, but she still comes up lacking in feral conviction, especially in comparison to the vampy, campy likes of Green and Dawson. Hell, the stunt-casted likes of Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven and Stacy Keach (imagine a mozzarella-shorn Pizza the Hutt from Spaceballs) make just as much of an impression as Alba. On the one hand, kudos to the still self-parodying Christopher Lloyd for playing a heroin-shooting alley cat variation of Doc Brown, but I'm still trying to convince myself Machete Kills vet Lady GaGa was NOT an understudy for Marisa Tomei.

The dizzying pulp style is still there, provided that's all you got from the original. Everything still is lensed in that deep, dingy monochrome via green-screen with sparse colors that accentuate certain allures, like Julia Garner's curly blonde locks, Eva Green's coat of blue silk or the intimidating goon Manute's (Dennis Haysbert) golden eye. The compositions hew faithful to the chiaroscuro framing of Miller's panels, or at least the two stories which are proper adaptations (the other being the prologue involving Marv in a destructive, murderous rewrite of The Hangover), whereas the originals blend in with some surreal invention. The violence is as cartoonishly grisly as ever, with enough jutting geysers of bright white blood on tap to keep the MPAA from pitching a fit. Miller still prefers his men tortured and his women topless, although the latter is a tall order to fill. Everything adheres to the antiquated, reductive standards of the noir genre with as much of a vengeance as its cynical characters. And Marv is still downing prescription medicine like it's candy whilst reminding you through voiceover that he's "got a condition."

Jesus Christ, this IS like The Spirit, after all! This IS Robert Rodriguez without the quality control, again! "Yeesh!" I wanted so badly to admire Sin City: A Dame to Kill For on the same primitive, unapologetic level as before, but nine years of stalling, two interim tragedies (Michael Clarke Duncan and Brittany Murphy) and a string of mediocre to worse efforts associated with Rodriguez & Miller have lowered the bar with which this movie limbos beneath. Never mind the aged skinniness of its novelty, this is just turgid, clumsy and a joyless defilement of what was already pleasurably perverted. There is no charge to this film's metaphysical exploitation that is not fleeting or feeble. All you get is a tedious burlesque of its storied antecedents, a movie which becomes its own Yellow Bastard. It's sinful, it's tragic, but what it ruefully isn't is passionate.

Diner

DINER

(R, Warner Bros. Pictures, 110 minutes, theatrical release date: March 5, 1982)

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In what became the year of the teenage sex comedy, Barry Levinson's 1982 slice-of-life film Diner looked like an underdog then and still does even now. It was made for $5 million by a studio which had little faith in a dialogue-driven variant on the classic American Graffiti formula. The central sextet of actors could not develop into a cohesive until they all shared one camped, fetid trailer, saving their group moments until the end of the shoot. It was practically shelved until positive critical reception, spearheaded by influential New Yorker scribe Pauline Kael, brought Levinson's film reluctantly into the light. And a phenomenal Vanity Fair article not only acknowledges its influence on the likes of English novelist Nick Hornby and the prolific American filmmaker Judd Apatow, but also tells you straight up the reservations experienced by the likes of Kevin Bacon, Ellen Barkin and Mickey Rourke, the three cast members with the brightest, most prolific careers of the ensemble troupe.

Diner, however, remains a surprising, effortlessly bittersweet treat after nearly 30 years since its uncertain distribution. Better not to lump Barry Levinson in with the glorified puerility of the Bob Clarks and Boaz Davidsons of the world and instead see Levinson as the American heir apparent to Federico Fellini, particularly citing his 1953 story of encroaching adulthood, I Vitelloni. Here is a movie rich in character and conversation, and even when it's not, has the power of perception and passage. But where the Academy Award-nominated Levinson (here for Best Original Screenplay) really shines is in the presentation of community; the autobiographical Baltimore of Christmastime 1959 feels genuinely like a living thing of its own, a joint triumph of setting, production design, song selection, and minute details. There's always something on the margins which adds to the period precision; the swarming crowd of a movie theater, the hubbub of a dance hall social, the patrons of the titular all-night eatery. At one point, the camera holds on a serviceman asleep on a train station bench, a layabout whose presence is paralleled by the image of one of the principals emerging from his lazy indulgence.

That individual is Eddie Simmons (Steve Guttenberg), about to plunge nervously into the married life but whose irritability is felt in the contentious banter amongst his friends as well as his own mother (Jessica James). Riled from his late sleeping by his best friend Billy Howard (Timothy Daly), a surprise visitor bussed in from New York for the New Year's Eve nuptials, he proceeds to pester and threaten his knife-toting mom to the point where he coerces her to make a baloney sandwich for breakfast. His attitude towards women is sorely underdeveloped, even towards his own bride-to-be, Elyse, who needs to pass a rigorous football trivia exam to keep Eddie from calling the whole thing off. As he puts it, "If you want to talk, you always have the guys at the diner. You don't need a girl if you want to talk."

One of Eddie's confidantes is Larry "Shrevie" Schreiber (Daniel Stern), already a husband and just as stunted in communicating with his own wife, Beth (Ellen Barkin). "I can come down here, and we can bullshit the entire night away, but I cannot hold a five-minute conversation with Beth," Shrevie admits, pining for the days when sex was extensively planned out of wedlock. Instead of Eddie's preoccupation with the Colts, Shrevie is hung up on his library of 45s to the point where he lashes out at Beth for fudging up the filing system and even having the gall to not know who Charlie Parker is.

Billy earnestly proposes to his platonic friend of six years, Barbara (Kathryn Dowling), after an impromptu night of passion a month ago leaves her pregnant, but they fail to see eye-to-eye, just as well. "You're confusing a friendship with a woman and love," she reasons, but Billy's error is merely one of telling and not showing. The only exception to the romantic rule is Bobby "Boogie" Sheftell (Mickey Rourke), a smooth-talking salon employee compulsively addicted to sex and gambling.

And then there's Timothy Fenwick, Jr. (Kevin Bacon), a reckless college dropout and drunkard who is introduced freaking out his underage date and punching out windows in the basement of the dancehall "for a smile." Billy, Shrevie, Eddie, Boogie, and Fenwick commiserate regularly at the Fells Point Diner, a greasy spoon café which the boys retreat to as if it was their own treehouse to banter about love, loss and whether Frank Sinatra or Johnny Mathis makes the better make-out music.

Flanked by the fast-talking, wise-cracking Modell (Paul Reiser), Levinson's boys' club is unflappable to the point of often stepping over each other's words and stammering in the face of verbal curveballs. The heated Sinatra vs. Mathis argument is taken to its logical end when Eddie inquires Boogie about his preference, and the rakish Romeo simply states "Presley." Both Steve Guttenberg and Daniel Stern's reactions are spontaneous and side-splitting.

Movies like St. Elmo's Fire, Fandango and Queens Logic (also with Kevin Bacon) rose up in the aftermath of the micro-success of Diner, all chronicling the bonds and burdens of tight-knit young adult friends in the process of accounting for real-life responsibilities. Diner, however, remains a singular achievement, a film which goes against Modell's ad-libbed gripe about "nuance" not being a real word by continually offering finely-sketched and wonderfully performed examples of actual nuance, so much so that the film takes on a literary transcendence.

The character of Fenwick, for instance, is a gem of lost innocence and misplaced rebellion. Frittering away his grandfather's trust fund despite being smart enough to compete on College Bowl, Fenwick has a knack for keeping his friends off-guard for laughs but is also bitterly distanced from his family. He's the one least likely to cope or compromise, which is something his friends each realize is imminent. A stunt in which Fenwick, choked up that someone has stolen the Baby Jesus statue from the church's Nativity display, strips down to his boxers and takes his place in the manger is farce and tragedy in equal measure. Bacon was betwixt Friday the 13th and Footloose at this point in his younger career, and makes a marvelous breakthrough.

Equally affecting are Mickey Rourke, who had a minor but memorable part in Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat prior, and the sumptuous Ellen Barkin in her screen debut (as were Daly and Reiser, going the full mensch). Boogie is preoccupied with hot tips and hotter girls, boastfully wagering his friends on the extents of his conquests, leading to the archetypical scene where he pulls the old "hole in the popcorn bag" trick to get ahead. Not only that, but he's in debt $2000 to the local sharks, who are violently losing their patience. And yet Rourke invests enough to keep Boogie from being wholly boorish, especially in his moments with Barkin's Beth, a former steady of his who desperately needs emotional instead of physical validation after Shrevie's self-righteous record collection tantrum. An awkward sense of integrity develops when he can't use Beth to fool his friends into believing he made it with his girlfriend.

Maybe the appearance of a classy horseback rider who calls herself Jane Chisholm (Claudia Cron), after the Chisholm Trail linking Texas to Kansas, could signal real love, but he is too confused after her first appearance to follow through. As Fenwick puts it, "Do you ever get the feeling that there's something going on that we don't know about?"

Even characters who on the outside embody the most gratingly childish attitudes towards their lot are performed and written with great finesse. Steve Guttenberg as Eddie, for instance, reveals a latent uncertainty behind his clingy Colts cultism and alpha male assertions, a sympathetic hesitation to commit fueled by the lack of wild oats sown and inability to fulfill his position as loving husband. The fact that we never really see Elyse may have the marginalizing feeling of a looming specter, but that doesn't take away from the humanization that occurs in regards to his character.

The undervalued Daniel Stern character of Shrevie could've been also reduced to sour petulance were it not for his casual ease with a one-liner and a lack of spite which makes his argument with Beth play a lot more poignantly. The fact that he concludes his tirade by recalling the song which played when they first met at a graduation party for Modell's sister, Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame," proves his musical romanticism is not completely pitiable, as he genuinely has love for Beth. As it is for much of the gender negotiations in Diner, the theme is communication breakdown and the raw expressions of stubbornly misplaced male ego. Not only in his encyclopedic memory of his record collection does Shrevie recall the type of maniacal impediments Nick Hornby laid bare in High Fidelity.

Levinson and his incredible cast of burgeoning big names treat the material with such genuine skill, that Diner manages to achieve that brilliant feat which makes the best self-reflexive passion projects work. It makes the personal universal. Even if you never watched a friend unzip his pants with a popcorn box seated above it or gazed in shock as a diner customer had a marathon meal consisting of an entire left side's worth of entrées, there are laughs and smiles in abundance. I never once felt the movie struck a false note, even when Billy commanders the piano at a dull strip bar for a boogie woogie infusion, and the dialogue both original and on loan (from Sweet Smell of Success, natch) display the kind of warmth and backwards authenticity that Shrevie would be proud of,  just so long as he doesn't blame any jumps or skips on his wife. Some things are better left silently forgiven.

We'll always have Diner, though, which proudly warrants a great big standing O. I'll gladly take a doggy bag.