Blood, Sex and Death: Must Be The New ‘Sin City: A Dame To Kill For’ Theatrical Trailer [Video]

Jessica Alba, Powers Boothe, Josh Brolin, Rosario Dawson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eva Green, Dennis Haysbert, Stacy Keach, Jaime King, Ray Liotta, Christopher Meloni, Jeremy Piven, Mickey Rourke, Juno Temple, Bruce Willis and Lady F*cking Gaga star in Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, the new Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller film coming out nine years after the pair first collaborated on a filmed adaptation of Miller's award winning Dark Horse graphic novels.

The phrase you often here in connection with the production is is "what took so long?" Based on the latest theatrical trailer, the more common remark is going to be "better late than never."

Undeniably the most faithful aesthetic translation of a comic book to film, Rodriguez & Miller's Sin City movies are, like the graphic novels, exercises in brazenly visceral entertainment executed with masterful technique. We've seen loads of "green-screen" or  "digital backlot" productions since the original Sin City in 2005, but nothing -- not even Miller's own, similarly envisioned version of Will Eisner's The Spirit -- have come close to achieving the bizarre harmony of Rodriguez and Miller's marriage of technology and pure, intravenous tone.

The sounds and images of Sin City are plainly outrageous and yet inescapably seductive, and the new trailer knows it. The clip presents the barest bones of what are already just threads of stories -- or yarns, as Miller calls his works: Nancy Callahan wants revenge on Senator Roarke for his role in the death of her protector, Hartigan, who visits her as a ghost in what is a new story created just for this film. In another original installment, a gambler called Johnny tries to punk the same big bad with what look like some very bloody results. And a foolish man gets brought low by a diabolical woman -- the titular dame to kill for.

The stories are so light they're almost not there, but the filmmakers and cast inject them with such emotional heft and assault the senses with an audio-visual experience like no other, one can't help but enjoy the ride. At least, that was the case with the original film. We'll see if the followup delivers when it opens August 22.