--- title: Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For Movie Review description: The actress brings sex and violence in one killer package to this second installment of Frank Miller's neo-noir canonical: https://time.com/3159684/sin-city-2-movie-review-eva-green/ author: Richard Corliss article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-08-22T16:29:29.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T09:48:30.590Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For Movie Review og:description: The actress brings sex and violence in one killer package to this second installment of Frank Miller's neo-noir og:url: https://time.com/3159684/sin-city-2-movie-review-eva-green/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6b8928f4407a5f9c/6986a09106f2c121283306b3/889465_full.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR, from left: Eva Green Josh Brolin, 2014. ph: Rico Torres/©Dimension og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For Movie Review twitter:description: The actress brings sex and violence in one killer package to this second installment of Frank Miller's neo-noir twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6b8928f4407a5f9c/6986a09106f2c121283306b3/889465_full.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # REVIEW: Eva Green Is the Dame to Kill for in _Sin City 2_ by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Aug 22, 2014 4:29 PM UTC  From left: Eva Green, Josh Brolin in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, 2014. From left: Eva Green, Josh Brolin in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, 2014.Dimension Films by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Aug 22, 2014 4:29 PM UTC “You cannot defeat the goddess,” says her protector, the brute Manute (Dennis Haysbert). “She cannot die.” He’s talking about Ava Lord (Eva Green), the wife of a Basin City plutocrat and the embodiment of irresistible evil in _Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For_. Green has described Ava as less a woman — and she is _all_ woman — than a weapon, an improvised erotic device that explodes in the heart, guts and gonads of every man she meets — like Dwayne McCarthy (Josh Brolin), a crime photographer whom Ava played and betrayed some years back. He knows she’s poison, telling her, “I was born at night, but I wasn’t born last night,” yet he returns for another toxic dose. The woman is _bad_. Eva’s Ava is the essential new ornament to the gaudily entertaining, occasionally wearying sequel that Robert Rodriguez has spun out of Miller’s _Sin City_ comic books. Using motion-capture technology to duplicate the pulp originals — same settings and visual points of view, same dialogue, same black-and-white palette dabbed with flashes of lightning and splashes of blood — this movie and its 2005 predecessor proudly brandish the neo-noir aesthetic (or faux noir, if you think it doesn’t work). The men are tough, growly and haunted; the women are all sexy, and either sisters of mercy or, like Ava, angels of death. The viewer is encouraged not to hover above the dank, alluring milieu but to wade in and wallow there, to get as dirty as its denizens. It’s a movie mud bath that I found nearly as restorative as a spa treatment at the Dead Sea. **(READ:** [**Lev Grossman**](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1595241,00.html%20) **and** [**Corliss**](http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1598977,00.html%20) **for two takes on Frank Miller’s** **_300_** **)** The four stories in _Sin City 2_ reconvene many of the first film’s characters. Marv (Mickey Rourke in a more battered face than he displayed in _The Wrestler_) enforces his own outlaw law with the maxim, “Nothin’ wrong with killin’ a bunch of bad guys. It’s practically my civic duty.” He watches over Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba), a sad stripper whose old protector John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) got killed last time but keeps a postmortem watch, his forehead bearing the X scar of a villain’s bullet. Down in Old Town dwell a flock of Valkyries — righteous babes skilled in archery and knife-craft, led by the dominatrix Gail (Rosario Dawson, outfitted in the world’s bustiest bustier). Senator Roark (Powers Boothe) dishes out pain to those who would challenge his corrupt hold on the city, and Dwight (Brolin taking over the role from Clive Owen) is again on the receiving end of broken hearts and limbs. **(READ: Corliss’s** [**review of the first** **_Sin City_**](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1042479,00.html%20)**)** A few newbies are added into the mix: Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a cocky card sharp who underestimates the price of beating Roark at poker; Kroenig (Christopher Lloyd), a shady medic who tends to Johnny’s busted fingers; the sado-master Joey (Ray Liotta), photographed by Dwight during a sick tryst; the entrepreneur Wallenquist (Stacy Keach, encased in Jabba the Hutt facial flab and a polka-dot bow tie), whom Ava has use for; and Mort the cop (Christopher Meloni), who falls hard for Ava, directly to his doom. Movies are rated R for sex and violence, and _A Dame to Kill For_ has plenty of both. There are no fewer than three eyeball-ectomies, and a cutlery scene that turns a villain’s redoubt into a decapitorium. A despondent Nancy scars her own face, leaving phosphorescent Frankenstein stitches. But the mayhem is mostly aestheticized by the black-and-white-and-red-all-over visual scheme. A fight may be shown in silhouette against a brick wall — a throwback to the first animated feature, Lotte Reinger’s _The Adventures of Prince_ _Achmed_, and an old trick wielded by Rodriguez, the try-anything magician. Even if you don’t care for the characters or the story, you should agree with Dwight, after he takes his snoop photos of Joey: “The sad thing is, some of the compositions are pretty good.” **(FIND:** **_The Adventures of Prince Achmed_** **in** [**the all-TIME Top 25 Animated Features**](http://entertainment.time.com/2011/06/23/the-25-all-time-best-animated-films/slide/the-adventures-of-prince-achmed-1926/%20)**)** As for the sex: that’s Ava. She is the prime force of evil, and Green is the new movie’s reason for being. In a film era that mostly ignores womanly allure for guy-on-guy battles and bromance, Green has played the unregenerate temptress from _The Dreamers_ (her debut) to _300: Rise of an Empire_, with the miniseries _Camelot_ and _Penny Dre_adful in between. But Ava was the role waiting for her. Her huge emerald eyes glare above a blue silk gown in the monochrome murk; her body is often shown nude, in a swimming pool or on a bed, in the Cubist caress of Venetian-blind slats. Ava’s siren call summons Dwight there, imploring him to take his revenge on her body: “Make me hurt like I hurt you.” _Sin City: A Dame to Kill For_ is heavy on comic-strip hurt. It’s a big hurt but, for a late-August time-waster, a good one. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3159684/sin-city-2-movie-review-eva-green/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3159684/sin-city-2-movie-review-eva-green/"},"headline":"REVIEW: Eva Green Is the Dame to Kill for in Sin City 2","datePublished":"2014-08-22T16:29:29.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T09:48:30.590Z","description":"The actress brings sex and violence in one killer package to this second installment of Frank Miller's neo-noir","url":"https://time.com/3159684/sin-city-2-movie-review-eva-green/","keywords":["movies","jessica alba"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6b8928f4407a5f9c/6986a09106f2c121283306b3/889465_full.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Richard Corliss","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6b8928f4407a5f9c/6986a09106f2c121283306b3/889465_full.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR, from left: Eva Green Josh Brolin, 2014. ph: Rico Torres/©Dimension","caption":"SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR, from left: Eva Green Josh Brolin, 2014. ph: Rico Torres/©Dimension","creditText":"Dimension Films","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3159684/sin-city-2-movie-review-eva-green/","name":"REVIEW: Eva Green Is the Dame to Kill for in Sin City 2"}}]}] ```