Sure, the heroes are all borderline psychotics, but they are willing to stand up for what is right and just. Sure, the women are hookers, strippers and femme fatales, but they are willing to be masters of their own fate, and kick more arse than super-mums or manic pixie dream girls. Like the best noir it realises its pulpiness and relishes it, gleefully carrying over all the baggage from the ’40s. It is misogynistic, bloody, graphic and deeply worrying to any attempt to analyse it from a feminist perspective – yet at the same time it is strangely liberating and vibrant. It also continues the Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) story from the first film, following her as she plots revenge on the murderously corrupt Senator Roark.Īs always, Sin City is a violent and sexy mix of film noir and comics, filtered through the mind of the teenage boy that is apparently Frank Miller. The centrepiece story is A Dame To Kill For, an origin tale (of sorts) for Dwight (Josh Brolin) as he falls for the wrong woman and blood, betrayal and mayhem follows. This series of vignettes sees the return of favourite characters Marv (Mikey Rourke), Miho (Jamie Chung), Gail (Rosario Dawson), and Manute (Dennis Haysbert), as well as the introduction of new characters, such as the cocksure gambler Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and the femme fatale Ava (Eva Green). Skip forward almost 10 years and we are once again invited to walk the dark alleyways of Frank Miller’s Basin City. Sure, other films had tried it in the past ( Tank Girl, or Ang Lee’s The Hulk spring to mind), but none had pulled it off to the same degree or consistency that this black and white film does, with its splashes of colour, narration bubbles, panels, and heavy line drawings. It was a brash reworking of the noir genre, using the emerging technology of virtual sets to give audiences a comic book that has literally come to life. Starring Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin

Directed by Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez

Sin city a dame to kill for comic