Two words: Sin City. Jessica Alba has generally relied on her objective “hotness” (I feel as though I just morphed into Janis Ian from Mean Girls) to sustain a film career. And while that should make one irritated, it can all be forgiven for her role in Robert Rodriguez’s (and yeah, I guess Frank Miller’s, too) masterpiece.
In the archetype of a fallen angel, Alba plays Nanacy Callahan, a little girl who was once rescued from molestation by a decrepit police officer named John Hartigan (Bruce Willis). She grows up to be a stripper and eventually falls prey to the same lecherous creeper Roark Junior (Nick Stahl), who seeks to take revenge on Nancy for escaping his rape and kill all those years ago.
In order to get to Nancy, however, Roark Junior, now an unsightly yellow color from all his “reparative” surgeries, tricks Hartigan into finally confessing to the murders Roark committed. Once he gets out of prison on parole, he goes to find Nancy, leading Roark and his henchmen straight to her.
Playing the damsel in distress to perfection, Alba may very well be the dame to kill for in the sequel, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For--mercifully being released in August. And while Alba may have a handful of watchable work (though I wouldn’t count the Dark Angel TV series among it), Sin City trumps all–even Never Been Kissed and Honey.
