CRIME; 1hr 42min
STARRING: Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin, Eva Green
Night moves: Alba
The living is anything but easy in co-directors Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s splashily packaged, surreally violent revisiting of Miller’s very graphic novels. As it was in 2005’s Sin City, the mood is midnight-dark and the place is Basin “Sin” City. The dame to kill and die for is barely-if-clad bombshell Ava (Green), whom hardboiled P.I. Dwight (Brolin) knows is toxic but can’t resist. “Never let the monster out,” the anguished gumshoe husks to himself — needlessly, as it happens, since in this sleazoid metropolis, monsters are everywhere, from the downbeat boozers they hang out in to back-room power plays that could be the death of them (and where an oily Powers Boothe sweeps the creepstakes as a morally bankrupt senator).
That Ava is married doesn’t stop Dwight from turning for ball-busting assistance to saloon heavy Marv (Rourke); he of the punch-drunk profile. This isn’t Dwight’s brightest idea: Marv, who spends much of his time keeping a watchful eye on dancer Nancy (Alba) as she struts her damaged goods, is a hair-trigger type of guy. Then again, when bloodshed is small change and monsters are an everyday event, life — or what passes for it — is bound to be dirt cheap.
