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First Photos of Sin City: A Dame To Kill For

Robert Rodriguez, director of Sin City, recently tweeted this behind-the-scenes photo, the first from his currently-shooting sequel, Sin City : A Dame To Kill For, featuring himself and new cast member Josh Brolin as Dwight McCarthy, a role played by Clive Owen in the previous film.

Brolin and Rodriguez on set, while the above is the same scene once the effects are added in.

Brolin and Rodriguez on set, while the above is the same scene with a “quick photo touch up”

As with its predecessor, Sin City : A Dame To Kill For will follow a number of different storylines from the Frank Miller comic book series on which it is based. This first of these will be the eponymous “A Dame To Kill For”, which has Brolin’s Dwight becoming caught up in an intrigue with the love of his life, manipulative femme fatale Ava Lord, played by Eva Green. Manute, her hulking manservant, who appeared in the previous film, has been recast with Dennis Haysbert (the actor who played him previously, Michael Clarke Duncan, having passed away before the start of filming).

The various stories will take place at different points in the ‘Sin City’ timeline: the events of “A Dame To Kill For” occur prior to those of “The Big Fat Kill”, Dwight’s story in Sin City, and should address the incongruity between the two actors, Brolin and Owen, by showing the events that forced him to undergo radical plastic surgery, transforming the former into the latter. Similarly, Mickey Roarke‘s gladiatorial Marv is set for a return in “Just Another Saturday Night”, which should address his psychosis more directly than his previous tale.

There are also set to be two original stories that don’t appear in comic form, namely “The Long Bad Night”, which is set to star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and one as-yet untitled, which will center on Jessica Alba‘s Nancy. Levitt’s character is supposedly a cocky gambler named Johnny who wants to take down Sin City’s biggest crime boss, while Nancy’s story will follow on from the events she went through alongside Bruce Willis‘ Hartigan in “That Yellow Bastard”.

Willis seems to be one of the few members of cast not appearing in the sequel, though Jamie Chung and Jeremy Pivon are set to replace Devon Aoki and Michael Madsen as Japanese assassin Miho and bad cop Bob respectively. Ray Liotta has been cast as Joey Canelli, a cheating businessman, with Juno Temple as his mistress, Sally, an Old Town prostitute. Christopher Meloni as Bob’s partner, straight cop Mort, all of whom feature in the “A Dame To Kill For” storyline.

Powers Boothe is set for a return as the tyrannical Senator Roark, as is Rosario Dawson as ferocious S&M call girl Gail, and Jaime King as identical twin prostitutes Goldie and Wendy, who played an important role in Marv’s previous story “The Hard Goodbye”. Stacey Keach is crime boss Herr Wallenquist, who may well be the overarching villain Levitt’s Johnny faces off against, while former Playboy model Crystal McCahill will also be appearing in some capacity.

It’s been eight years since the first Sin City. Sin City : A Dame To Kill For is due for an October 4th release, but it remains to be seen if it can recapture that same pulpy, neo-noir magic. In any case, given the recent and fairly unambigous decline in the quality of Miller’s comic book work – just compare his propagandizing Holy Terror to his revolutionary Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – and the critical and commercial panning of The Spirit, based on the Will Eisner series and directed by Miller, it’s good to be back in Sin City.

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Robert Wallis

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