I'm kind of a sensitive person when it comes to senseless violence in cinema. Notice how I said senseless. If there's any kind of quality filmmaking, characterization, screenwriting or anything like that attached to the violence, I'm more than up for it. But senseless carnage for the sake of senseless carnage does have a knack for getting under my skin, and this movie has plenty of it. It's just a never ending flood of blood and violence, with no real purpose to it. It's just there for the sake of depicting depravity, and the way it's shot and presented clearly shows we're supposed to be having fun with all this mayhem. I wasn't having fun at all, and though I was kind of disturbed by the first few violent acts, by the end I was just sort of bored. At some point, the pointlessness behind the whole affair engulfs the movie, resulting in a movie that relentlessly tries to be provocative and memorable, but winds up being lifeless.
But all that ridiculous violence is far from the movies worst offense. Honestly, the absolute nadir of the movie is its cast, which contains a whose-who of talented folks who deserve way better than this. Look, I get that Mickey Rourke doesn't have a ton of roles to choose from, I totally get why he's here. And admittedly, the likes of Eva Green, Powers Boothe and Dennis Haybert don't quite have the clout to reject an easy paycheck like this. But why in the name of God are Josh Brolin and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in this garbage??? Neither one does anything interesting here, there's not captivating dialogue they can say, they pretty much do nothing interesting in the entire film despite the considerable talent both actors have. What a shameful waste.
The film is split up into a certain amount of stories, making it kind of an anthology film. The only real problem is the segments go on forever, and ever, and ever. Brolins story (in which he faces off against an old lover played by Eva Green) is ridiculous and hideously drawn out, but right after it's done, we return to the Joseph Gordon-Levitt story that was started off at the beginning of the feature. We've had no reminders of its existence, the two characters haven't crossed paths or anything, they just start Josephs story, abandoned it, and then went off for Brolins tale. Neither one is that interesting, but it's still irritating to keep starting and stopping these stories in an extremely random fashion.
What I find I really perplexing about this bizarre structure doesn't come in until near the end. Now, Levitts story wraps up in a manner that I thought was the ultimate end of the movie. The screen cuts to black for a bit and just as I was about to get up.....another story starts!!! This one starring Jessica Alba, who tries her best to inject some level of emotion into the tale. The story itself might actually work on some level (it's actually got kind of an interesting plot for a revenge story, which is more than can be said for the other tales) if it wasn't so clumsily written. By the time it abruptly ends, I had had more than enough of my fill of Sin City. Yeah, the visuals are impeccable, they're actually kinda stunning in some moments. 3D manages to enhance them in a manner that's kind of great to watch. But wow, the rest of the movie is just so off-the-rails, it just can't make any kind of positive impression. To quote Ian Malcom (Jeff goldblum) from Jurassic Park, just because you could doesn't mean you should, and in this case, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For should certainly have not been made.
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