By Cameron Heffernan

Much like when he made “The Spirit”, Frank Miller is after an ultra-stylized; all black and white paycheck, with a lot of zeros.  But does he deserve it?

Like most of you, I was a huge fan of Sin City, not only the graphic novels, but the movie as well. It was cool, sexy and all other cliche words you can use for a movie that features a lot of noir-monologing  into the camera, and tons of ultra-violence. Unfortunately, when that came out it was 2005, and I was 17. Today, at 25, that whimsical blindness to crap films is gone; left only a bitter old man, who’d like to explain why you shouldn’t waste your money on Sin City 2: A Dame To Kill For.

Here’s the Calvin Klein advertisement  from 1997, for ‘A Dame To Kill For’:

As well as ‘Dame‘, the original was Directed by Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids, Planet Terror) , and penned by Frank Miller (Robocop 3, 300, Etc.), SIn City, was THE quintessential dark-comic book movie to come out that year. With V for Vendetta not catching on initially, and Batman Begins seeming nowhere near what it would become, Sin City brought a certain grittiness to comic movies we weren’t seeing with things like Fantastic 4, Spider Man and X-Men.

Sin City had stylized nudity, creepy yellow bastards and Mickey Rourke looking like Mickey Rourke, even though you were supposed to think it was makeup.  At 17 it was cool. That was it. I can’t really explain what happened in it. I can’t even tell you what it was all about, or even working towards, with it’s three interconnecting, yet different story lines.  Black and White? Check. Jessica Alba kind-of being a stripper? Check. Bruce Willis being Bruce Willis? Unfortunately, check. It had everything an underdeveloped adolescent brain could want.

Nine years after the first one, Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez have come together for another one.

I ask the question, why? Why should anyone go see this? Why should anyone care that nine years later we have a sequel to a movie most probably forgot about? Why, knowing what you know from the first one, would you care about what happened before to characters you watched die in the first one? And Why, after the spirit and the now realized butchering of Batman, would you let Frank Miller Write something again?

Let’s start with, Why would you see this? : Maybe you’re bored, maybe you really like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Josh Brolin. Shit, who doesn’t right now. Well, let me tell you this. Unless you’re a genuine half-wit, you shouldn’t be seeing this movie. Leave that to the mouth breathers of this world and save yourself a few bucks.

Why would anyone care about this move, nine years after the first one? : Who the hell knows. Why did Miller and Rodriguez take this long? Then after realizing how long it had been, why did they even bother? Money of course. I don’t have any numbers to quote, but let’s face it, Miller has to have some money issues or Rodriguez does, cause this movie, and it’s hodge-podge cast are essentially to attract moths to the flame and collect their checks to pay off whatever debt they may have.

Why would you care about characters you already know the fate of?: By the end of Sin City, Rourke, Willis and anyone else you thought was interesting, is dead. (Spoiler alert, bleh.). Why would you care about Gordon-Leviit’s character unless your some fangirl(boy) who absolutely has to see every Levitt movie, cause you’re a creepy pseudo-stalker.

And the final, and most important question:

WHY THE HELL IS ANYONE PAYING OR GIVING WRITING JOBS TO FRANK MILLER?:

This shit should’ve stopped with Robocop 3 a long time ago.

Miller has had some great runs  in the ’80s and early ’90s with Ronin, the Sin City series, The Dark Knight Returns, and his game-changing run on Daredevil. Other then that, he went on to butcher Batman with The Dark Knight Strikes Again – only after rebuilding the character 15 years earlier –  and All-Star Batman and Robin. He also bent Will Eisner’s classic, The Spirit, over a barrel with an indescribably bad movie as well as pen the two worst Robocop movies (it can’t be stressed enough about how bad those Robocop movies are.).

I’m all about the old-school and respect for the OG’s in the gritty comic-world we live in. Frank Miller is the goddamn flag bearer for the gritty reboot when it comes to nerd-dom. He penned the greatest Daredevil run, and along with Alan Moore, brought Batman to the brooding justice-machine we know and fear today. He’s the reason we have “THE GODDAMN BATMAN”. Which is cool. And that’s it, cool, nothing else, nothing more. It’s time for him to stop. The Spirit was our first notion of Miller going off the edge. The factor that it’s now nine years later, and he’s only gotten worse since then only means we’re in for the worst with ‘A Dame To Kill For’, and you’re probably best off saving the $12.

I mean, would you go see a movie your senile grandfather wrote in order to pay off his litany of divorces? I thought not.