The original used colour carefully, for emphasis, for popping up important details.

Here it means more colour spliced into the black-n-white, and it's very distracting. Aside from the material, the biggest problem is the common sequel problem where they want to do the same that worked so well in the original, but with more oomph. They clearly wanted to give Jessica Alba something more to chew with her character, but it just doesn't have that edge. Nancy's Last Dance, our last story, is unfortunately the weakest story by far. A fine story and I could see this as an original Sin City story. Both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Powers Boothe have amazing screen presence and as they're pitted against one another throughout the night the stakes keep getting higher and higher, with satisfying results. The Long Bad Night, the first of the new stories, works because of its actors. It doesn't have much of a plot, and the supporting characters are nonexistent, but it's a good opening piece. The second adaptation story, Just Another Saturday Night, is really nothing more than an Ode to Marv (Mickey Rourke), and that's okay in my books. Just as good as the stories in the original film with same great quality acting, hardcore action and brutal visuals. Considered to be one of the better stories in the original comic books, it's a good thing they still had one such story to wrap their movie around.

Tellingly Miller was actually called back to write two new stories exclusively for the film. Not that the stories used here are bad, they're just not as great as the ones used in the first one. Unfortunately they decided to stick all the best stories into the first film, thus guaranteeing its success, but leaving the possible sequel without much material to use. Frank Miller's Sin City universe is a rich and interesting setting, and as the first Sin City film proved, it translates to the silver screen beautifully. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is not a bad idea on paper.

Big damn sin city