Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
Like the first Sin City film, this one is made up of sub-stories that, in some way or another, tie in to the main plot.Just Another Saturday Night:Marv (Mickey Rourke) is thrown from a vehicle. He has no idea how he got there or what just happened. There's a dead body lying near him. He grabs his pills and pops several into his mouth.He recalls walking through the projects of Basin City, an area where he was born and raised. As it was a Saturday night, Marv remembers being at Kadie's, getting drunk and checking out stripper Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba), along with all the other men in the joint. Outside, Marv sees a man on fire running and screaming. He comes across four preppy college boys dousing another man with gasoline. Marv breaks a bottle in front of them and tells them to let the guy go. One of the boys pulls out a gun and calls Marv a "Bernini Boy", but Marv thinks he called him "Bernie". He shoots Marv in the shoulder. Marv is mostly unfazed and when he doesn't go down, the boys get frightened and run. Marv catches two of them on the rooftops, aiming their guns at him. Two arrows come down, and Marv knows who's near. He makes a gesture to show he's on their side, and then points at the boys. Two more arrows hit them. Marv meets the two boys and asks the one that shot him why he called him Bernie. The boy says Bernini is the maker of the coat Marv is wearing. Marv then calls for a knife and slashes the boy's throat, while the other one takes another arrow. Marv then hijacks a cop car and chases after the other two, ramming into their car and bringing him to where we found him. He steps on the last boy's chest and crushes his lungs before lighting up the gas and blowing the cars up and fleeing the scene.The Long Bad Night (Part One):Senator Roark (Powers Boothe) is playing poker in the backroom of Kadie's with his associates, including a crooked cop. A drifter named Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) comes into the place. He's approached by a stripper named Marcie (Julia Garner). Johnny takes out a coin and walks with Marcie to the slot machine. He tells her to blow on the coin and then places it into the machine. He hits the jackpot. He gets another coin and tells Marcie to kiss it. She does, and he drops it into the machine, winning big again. Johnny takes the coins and Marcy to the backroom to play poker with Roark. Despite being warned against this move, Johnny plays well enough to beat Roark at his game. He takes his winnings and Marcie with him. The cop warns Johnny that he can't protect him.Johnny takes Marcie out for a night on the town. While walking the streets, they're followed by two thugs. Johnny tells Marcie to step aside while he handles them. He punches one thug in the face and grabs the blackjack from his hand, then beats the other thug before finishing off the first one. A limo pulls up. Johnny tells Marcie to meet him at a hotel. He gets in the limo, where Roark and his men are sitting. The goons beat Johnny's face, and Roark hands one of them pliers to break Johnny's fingers from his dealing hand. They throw Johnny out of the limo. Roark steps out and admits that he knows Johnny is his son, but he only ever considered his deceased son (Roark Jr/The Yellow Bastard) to be his own blood. Roark shoots Johnny in the leg and leaves him there to die. As he and his men leave, Johnny vows revenge on Roark.A Dame To Kill For:Dwight McCarthy (Josh Brolin) is spying on a man named Joey (Ray Liotta) and taking pictures of him as he goes into a hotel room to have sex with a prostitute named Sally (Juno Temple). He handcuffs her to the bed and roughly has his way with her. After they finish, Joey takes out his gun to kill Sally for fear that she'll say something to his wife. Dwight crashes through the skylight and lands on Joey, beating him unconscious. He takes Sally into Old Town where she'll be safe. Afterward, he goes to collect his payment from his client, which turns out to be Joey's wife, giving her the pictures she asked him for while her lawyer pays him.Dwight is driving the Mustang at high speed down a mountain road, and feels a sense of rage overcoming him. He warns himself not to let the beast out. At home, he gets a call from a familiar voice, one that he hoped he'd never hear again - Ava Lord (Eva Green). She has him meet her at Kadie's. He wants nothing to do with her, but she begs him for forgiveness and protection against her husband Damien. Dwight indifferently says he forgives Ava and tells her to leave. She pulls him in for a kiss, and he's hooked. Manute (Dennis Haysbert) enters and threatens Dwight before taking Ava away. Marv, watching from the bar, offers to step in for Dwight. He tells Manute this isn't Marv's fight. Manute takes Ava with him.We next see Dwight up on the rooftop at Ava's home where he takes pictures of her as she swims naked in her pool. Manute's men ambush him and hold him down while he's brutally beaten by Manute. They toss him out of their limo as it's still moving, leaving him in front of his place. As he stands up, he sees his Mustang parked outside and wonders how it got there. He goes into his apartment to find Ava waiting for him, naked on his bed. She asks to be punished, for him to make her feel the pain that HE feels. Dwight slaps her, and then they get into rough sex. After they're finished, Ava tells Dwight that she's tried to get out of her marriage several times because Damien is an abusive husband who has Manute torture her using methods that leave no noticeable signs of injury. She tells him that her husband abuses her, and does not care where she goes off to, as the servant Manute (Dennis Haysbert) will always find her and take her back to him. At this point, as if right on cue, Manute suddenly appears from the shadows. Dwight punches him twice in the face before Manute punches him so hard in the chest that Dwight flies out the window. Back in Dwight's bedroom, Manute helps Ava back into her coat, saying she has an "appointment to keep."Dwight goes to Kadie's to ask Marv for help. He gets Marv drunk enough to get him riled up and ready to kill. They get to Ava's home, where Marv annihilates everybody in his path. He takes on Manute, where the two hulking brutes beat each until Marv knocks Manute out cold, and then plucks his right eye out. Dwight enters the house to confront Damien (Marton Csokas). Damien pulls his gun on him, but Dwight beats his face and crushes his throat, killing him. Ava asks Dwight what it "feels like to kill an innocent man." Dwight realizes he was set up, and Ava pulls out her gun to shoot him. She misses Dwight's heart and head, but she manages to shoot him out the window. He lands on the concrete and is unconscious.Marv grabs Dwight and puts him in the back of the car. Dwight's right eye is nearly hanging out. Marv evades the cops and makes it into Old Town. The cops don't follow them any further, knowing their limits, save for one cop who Dwight figures to be a rookie. The girls of Old Town shoot at the car and blow it up with flamethrowers as the cop flees. Marv brings Dwight to Gale (Rosario Dawson) and her girls. Gale sees Dwight looking really messed up. She tends to him but is angry with him for leaving Old Town. Gale's girls even think they ought to just kill him, specifically twins Goldie and Wendy (both played by Jaime King). Miho (Jamie Chung) gets her sword ready to kill Dwight until Gale introduces him as the man who saved her years ago when two thugs nearly got the drop on her.Back at Ava's home, she's interviewed by the lieutenant Mort (Christopher Meloni) and his partner Bob (Jeremy Piven). She pretends to be devastated over Damien's death, and she subtly comes onto Mort. Bob notices the attraction and even feels a bit aroused by her. Eventually, Mort succumbs to the temptation and goes over to Ava's house to have sex with her while also trying to find Dwight. Dwight ends up calling Ava's home, which makes her tense. Mort drives away with Bob, who berates Mort for the affair. Mort loses it and shoots Bob in the eye and then stops the car, throws his body over a cliff, and then kneels in the road and shoots himself in the head. Dwight says this is part of Ava's seduction that drives men mad.Gale decides to help Dwight get back at Ava. We see her inside a party held at Ava's home where she overhears Ava conspiring with another mobster, Herr Wallenquist (Stacy Keach Jr.) to kill Dwight. Later on, Dwight arrives from getting facial reconstruction surgery to go back to Ava's home undetected. However, Manute recognizes him from his eyes. He takes Dwight to Ava's home, where Gale and Miho have gone to kill all the guards before allowing Dwight to reach Ava. Dwight first shoots Manute into Ava's pool, and Gale throws a bomb that blows up and gets glass across Ava's face, scarring her. Ava shoots Manute down for good, and then tries to seduce Dwight once again. They kiss one last time before Dwight shoots Ava. She slowly dies, and Dwight plans to take the backstreets with Gale and Miho to get out of there undetected.The Long Bad Night (Part Two):Johnny goes to Dr. Kroenig (Christopher Lloyd) with only $40 to get himself fixed. Kroenig gets the bullet out of Johnny's leg, and offers to fix Johnny's hand in exchange for his shoes. After this, as Johnny is walking away in the rain, he remembers Marcie and runs to the hotel. Unfortunately, Roark and his guys got there already. They show Johnny Marcie's severed hands before throwing her head to him. Roark says he could kill Johnny but then laughs maniacally and says he likes him the way he is.Johnny is remorseful for his quest for vengeance as it has gotten Marcie killed. He goes to a diner and meets the waitress Bertha (Lady Gaga). She gives him a dollar out of sympathy. He takes it to Kadie's and hits the slots again for a rematch with Roark. He deals with his left hand this time, being ambidextrous. Roark taunts him about his mother, calling her a whore. Johnny folds on the first several hands, letting them go by but which we see by the cards he would have won, and then finally calls 'all in' and beats Roark with four Aces over Kings. He then acts cocky once again, telling Roark that he has now beaten him two nights in a row, and that stories about it would get around making everyone aware that he beat him, and that in this way he would keep beating him forever. However, Roark gets angry at this, tells him off and finally says "power is as power does", then he lifts his gun and shoots him in the forehead. He has his men get rid of the body.Nancy's Last Dance:Nancy visits the grave of her former protector John Hartigan (Bruce Willis). Since he killed himself to protect her, she has become a bitter alcoholic. She continues to work at Kadie's as a stripper, with her new act as a gunslinger. On multiple occasions, she's aimed at Roark, desperate for revenge, but she's never been able to pull the trigger. She goes to the shooting range and practices frequently, imagining Roark's head being shot at. Not even Roark himself realized that the girl his son had kidnapped grew up to be the same stripper he saw at Kadie's every night.Nancy sees hallucinations of Hartigan telling her that he'll never leave her. It begins to haunt her mind as she can't bring herself to kill Roark. She has a nightmare that he is in her room, threatening to kill her.After performing onstage, Nancy smashes her head in the mirror and grabs broken glass, cutting her face. Later, she gets stitched up and is confronted by Marv. He offers to help Nancy get to Roark. Outside Kadie's, three thugs come in with guns. Marv grabs two guns from one thug, knocks him out, and shoots the other two. Nancy finishes off the last guy.Nancy and Marv make their way to Roark's estate, where Marv once again slaughters his way through all the goons, while Nancy kills some men with her crossbow. They make it inside, but Marv is wounded. Nancy gives him a cigarette and lets him sit this one out. She makes it to Roark's room and sees him. She shoots at him, but it's just a reflection. The actual Roark shoots Nancy in the side and taunts her. He shoots her two more times before deciding where he should shoot her since Hartigan shot his son in the groin. Before Roark can deliver the final shot, he sees Hartigan in the mirror, throwing him off. This gives Nancy a chance to grab her gun and shoot Roark in the shoulder. It brings him down, giving Nancy another clear shot. Roark looks at her in horror as she says, "This is for John Hartigan...fucker!" BLAM.
comedy, dark, neo noir, murder, violence, flashback, revenge