An evening with Eva Green seemed like a good remedy for boredom.

What’s It About? Dwight, Johnny, Marv, and Nancy face their demons in a city full of violence, corruption, booze, and loose women.

STRAIGHT UP: Neither inspiring nor awful. 6/10

What I Liked

Eva Green as Ava Lord – I love Eva Green, and I love seeing her own her role as this film’s vampy villainess. She looks gorgeous and carries herself with confidence; her voice is sultry, but crackles with evil intent. Ava’s unique visual cue – her eyes glow yellow when she’s up to no good – is especially striking; my eyes were drawn to her every time she was onscreen.

Real graphic novel style – A lot of comic book adaptations try to be as faithful as possible to scenes from the original work, but the Sin City films really take this to the next level. Thanks to some creative camera angles and shot transitions, the black-and-white cinematography, and straight-off-the-panel effects – like matte-white blood that resembles ink splashes – this movie’s overall style remains distinctive.

The use of color – I still can’t think of a single other movie that uses color composition as creatively as the Sin City pair. While much of the original film’s style has been imitated over the past 9 years, this particular element has never been duplicated.

An action-packed plot – While there is no single standout action scene, this movie provides as steady a stream of fistfights and gunfire as anything I’ve seen this summer. I certainly wasn’t bored.

What I Disliked

Everyone sounds the same – Almost every character in this movie speaks in the same gravelly tough-guy monotone. A few lines delivered with real feeling would go a long way here, but only Eva Green seems to remember how to emote in this one.

Some cheap-looking visual effects – While I like the look of A Dame to Kill For in general, it doesn’t always look good under a microscope. Some of the makeup and prosthetics applied to the cast – Marv’s face, Dwight’s Clive Owen disguise, Nancy’s scars – look pretty silly, and in a few scenes, it’s jarringly obvious that everyone is just standing in front of a green screen.

Johnny – As he’s written, Johnny is possibly the stupidest character I’ve encountered in a movie in some time. His decisions range from clueless to nonsensical, and even his ultimate “victory” amounts to nothing.

Bruce Willis – He only shows up to look sad and say “I love you, Nancy” a half-dozen times. There’s literally no reason for him to be here.

The entire final act – Compared to the rest of the film, the final act – an epilogue sequence set four years after the events of the original Sin City – feels predictable and trite. Worse yet, it compromises two of the most important characters in the story – Marv and Senator Roarke – and trivializes both Johnny’s plot arc and Hartigan’s sacrifice.

CLOSING THOUGHT: The original Sin City was the first R-rated movie I ever saw in a theater. I remember enjoying it, but to date I’m not sure if that was more due to circumstance or the film’s own merits. Going by my feelings about A Dame to Kill For, I think I have reason to doubt my younger self. It’s not that this movie is awful – it’s certainly better than the recent Transformers, and I enjoyed parts of it – but it’s not particularly memorable and seems undercooked on the whole. For a production with such a self-assured style and big-name cast, that’s a difficult fault to forgive. I want to pin the lion’s share of the blame on Frank Miller, whose reputation endures more in spite of his recent work than because of it. That said, I’d also like to take one more opportunity to praise Eva Green, who salvages as much of this movie as she can. (If not for her, I’d have given it a lower score.) She was also great – even better, I’d say – in the recent 300 sequel, which leaves me wondering what she could do given stronger source material to work with. Maybe someone can find her a spot in the next Marvel movie?