Sin City: A Dame to Kill For - 2 1/2 stars

This sequel to Sin City follows a few returning characters and several new ones.  Marv (Mickey Rourke) wakes up on the street to find two wrecked cars, a bunch of dead bodies, and he has no memory of what happened.  Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a cocky gambler, rolls into town with plans to beat Senator Roark (Powers Boothe) at a game of poker.  Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba), the stripper who doesn't strip, is haunted by the death of John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) and is looking for revenge. 

But the best story of the bunch concerns Dwight McCarthy (Josh Brolin) and his ex-lover Ava Lord (Eva Green).  Ava convinces Dwight that she still loves him and needs to be rescued from her abusive new husband.  When Dwight walks into a trap that Ava sets up for him, Dwight turns to Marv for help getting revenge.  This story was the most interesting, and it also took up the most screen time.  I think there were at least 30 minutes of screen time where the movie never cut away from this story.  But most of the time the movie jumped back and forth between the other stories.

I enjoyed most of the movie but the last 15 or 20 minutes focused on Nancy Callahan and I got bored.  Her story isn't that interesting.  She goes on stage, dances while drinking a bottle of booze, thinks about shooting Senator Roark, then goes backstage to pout.  This seemed to happen several times.  By the time she and Marv actually go after Roark, I lost interest completely. 

Just like the first Sin City, it looked great.  Every frame looks like it was taken from the graphic novel, and there were some fun side characters.  My favorite was Christopher Lloyd as a creepy back-alley doctor.  The movie could have used more of him.

This wasn't as good as the first Sin City, but it was entertaining enough until the last 20 minutes.  I just wish the movie hadn't focused so much of Nancy's story.  Maybe they could have done more with Johnny and his story, since it seemed a bit too simple.  The character was too cocky, and he didn't seem to have much of a plan.  But Gordon-Levitt and Powers Boothe were fun to watch.  They seemed to be the only ones having any fun in this movie.