2014 sequel
Rating: 13/20
Plot: A continuation of the shenanigans in Basin City.
I'm not sure if it's just that the two hours of the first movie with mostly these same characters, the stylized violence, and the neo-noir caricaturization were more than enough or what, but this just didn't work as well. And I can't figure out why Marv, Mickey Rourke's character, is even in the last story since it takes place after he died. Of course, you have to be willing to throw all reality out the window in order to enjoy a movie made by people who have thrown all reality out the window. This is a cartoon for adult, probably just adult men, except if Wile E. Coyote was shot as many times as some of these characters, he'd probably die. I'm not sure the stories are as strong or as creative in this installment, and the style, something that felt fresh in 2005, feels more like a rehash here. It's still often entertaining, especially if you like seeing cartoon characters beheaded, but you get a little bored during this one. Seems like most of the characters, at least the ones who aren't yellow, returned for this one with Powers Boothe's Senator Rourke standing out the most. Boothe's got the perfect face for this sort of movie, and his voice is even better. His villainous character helps connect everything that's going on in Basin City this time around. Rourke, Willis, and Alba return to do more of the same. Josh Brolin steps in for Clive Owen, Gordon-Levitt just doesn't feel like he fits to me, and Haysbert replaces Michael Clarke Duncan as Manute. Christoper Meloni and Ray Liotta are also around. And they're all fine, just a little stiff because of the combination of being forced to act in front of green screens and read these hyper-stylized hard-boiled lines of dialogue or narration. Of course, the real star of the show is Eva Green who plays the "dame" in the title. Her character is the best written, and she spends about half of the movie naked, it seems, so there's not a lot to complain about with her. As an exaggerated femme fatale, she and her character just work, and although at first I was skeptical that she was really enough to kill for, I was eventually won over. I think a lot of it had to do with the clever colorization of some of her features, especially those blue eyes. Still, she's naked enough times to make this feel a lot more exploitative than the first movie. The whole thing just feels like a knock-off, a copy, a cheap variation. I definitely wanted to like it a lot more, but I was a little bored with this sequel. I'd still see a part three though, but maybe not unless it came out in 2022.
Oh, I forgot how much I liked seeing Christopher Lloyd in this. I'm adding another point. I also thought I kept spotting Jim Jarmusch, but it wasn't him.
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