Sin City: A Dame to Kill For 2014

Kyle Smith, New York Post: It's 100 solid minutes of wearying pastiche, and I found myself checking my watch a lot. Read more

Soren Anderson, Seattle Times: This new "Sin City" features the signature characteristics and many of the original's characters but seems less adventurous. It feels a little flabby and self-satisfied. The element of surprise is gone. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety: Rare indeed is the movie that features this many bared breasts, pummeled crotches and severed noggins and still leaves you checking your watch every 10 minutes. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: This is a great cast, but with the few exceptions they simply serve the effects. Read more

Tom Russo, Boston Globe: As usual with "Sin City," much of the vibe is about echoing genre touchstones, while the look isn't quite like anything else the digital age has seen. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Reviewers were forbidden from posting a word about this sequel until opening day, lest we give away the shocking secret that it's a carbon copy of its predecessor. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: I'm not sure what mood I'd have to be in to truly enjoy "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For." But I'm not in it. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: If only the characters didn't have to talk. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: 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. Read more

Adam Graham, Detroit News: The movie winds up folding under the weight of its own heavy tone, itself another victim of the darkness and nihilism of Sin City. Read more

Cary Darling, Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com: Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is like Paris after the zombie apocalypse: beautiful to look at but not a living soul in sight. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, Film.com: In a Hollywood landscape where so much action cinema in plagued with sameness, I can not in good conscience give anything with this level of inspired design an entirely negative review. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: As an exercise in style, it's diverting enough, but these mean streets are so well traveled that it takes someone like Eva Green to make the detour through them worth the trip. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: The greatest sin of "Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame To Kill For" is the way its high style is brought low -- visually stunning, but emotionally vapid, unrelentingly violent, its splendiferous comic book cast mostly squandered. Read more

Amy Nicholson, L.A. Weekly: Eva Green is sexy, funny, dangerous and wild - everything the film needed to be - and whenever she's not on screen, we feel her absence as though the sun has blinked off. Read more

Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News: Anyone offended by graphic violence, kinky sex and eyefuls of nudity should stay away. But for those who like their fiction hard-boiled like a rock and naughty to the bone, expect to be pleased, if not thoroughly satisfied. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: The movie's trademark mix of live action and drawing techniques (white silhouettes, reddened lips, an abundance of venetian blinds) looks fantastic. If it's depth you want, you've knocked on the wrong door. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: The movie's all just broads and mugs and gats and gore. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: The characters don't click, and the action feels dull. Read more

Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times: Punishingly stylized, this marriage of comic-book panels and hard-boiled dialogue has a heaviness that can't be explained solely by its cynicism or lack of wit. It's a blunt instrument whose visual shadings far surpass the kill-or-be-killed storytelling. Read more

Michael Sragow, Orange County Register: Miller's original comic-book frames serve narrative functions, but these movies are all grabby graphics, devoid of compelling style. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Why sit through this pimply excuse for pulp fiction? Why not read the real boys (Goodis, Cain, Thompson), or see the real films (Forget it, Jake. It's not Chinatown)? Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: For those who appreciated Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's 2005 campy, kinetic film noir homage, Sin City, the 2014 follow-up, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is unlikely to disappoint. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: This is one badass movie. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Sin City: A Dame To Kill For doesn't explode onscreen the way the first one did. Miller's monochrome palette, splashed with color that shines like a whore's lip gloss, doesn't startle as it once did. Read more

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: It is, in almost every way, inferior to its predecessor. It's poorly paced and repetitive. Read more

Kristin Tillotson, Minneapolis Star Tribune: "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For" is worth the watch if you expect nothing more than disparate comic-strip frames of action. But nine years in coming, this follow-up ultimately fizzles. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: As in the first film, there are judicious stabs of color ... And Alba is a showstopper in a fringed cowgirl outfit. But nine years wiser, we know that pretty things aren't always worth killing for. Read more

Christopher Orr, The Atlantic: There are a handful of ways in which A Dame to Kill For actually improves on the first movie. Alas, none are enough to prevent it from being a substantial disappointment. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: If you showed the Sin City midnight world in smaller doses, as a weekly series on late-night cable television, the slick graphics and cold kink might be more compelling. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: It's a town of bad women and worse poets, where the fists are hard, the talk is tough but nothing is for real - and nothing doesn't add up to much. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: This is Rodriguez's second sequel in a row in which he turns sex, violence and exploitation into an occasional for dullness. For a film loaded with decapitations and gun-toting ladies in bondage gear, Sin City gets really tedious really quickly. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: You don't expect to be exhausted by reams of soul-sick narration and artful chiaroscuro compositions, but that's what happens. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: The cartoonish mayhem in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For aims for a film noir sensibility, but too frequently the script simply resorts to anachronistic scenes of Jessica Alba twerking. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: It's hard to believe that so much visual elegance has been brought to bear on material so ugly, and yet the disjunction is intentional, and the film is all of a piece. Read more

Stephanie Merry, Washington Post: The aesthetic quality is still there, even if there haven't been too many great leaps since Rodriguez unveiled "Sin City" in 2005. But the stories aren't nearly as engrossing. Read more