By Cheryl Eddy

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: Nancy (Jessica Alba) faces the
"Yellow Bastard" (Nich Stahl). Photo courtesy of Dimension Films.

Rebel auteur Robert Rodriguez (Once upon a Time in Mexico), who carbon-copies his scenes from Miller's graphic novels, insisted on a codirecting credit for the artist – even though it meant resigning from the Director's Guild of America, which rarely grants waivers to its "one director per film" rule. To bring Miller's stylized vision to life, Rodriguez went fully digital, shooting actors in front of green screens and filling in the rest during post-production. This all-C.G. approach is ideal for Sin City's sinister mise-en-scène, which requires rainstorms, a seedy array of bars and back alleys, solitary-confinement cells, and at least one T. rex. It also complements Sin City's palette: stark black-and-white, with shocking bits of color dropped in for emphasis. Visually, Sin City is everything last year's similarly engineered Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was not: bold and memorable, with effects that enhance rather than overpower the narrative.

Rodriguez may stand proudly outside the Hollywood mainstream, but he's still able to recruit a huge cast of mostly well-knowns, as well as "special guest director" Quentin Tarantino (who helms a typically outrageous scene involving a guy, a car, and a talking corpse). Tarantino's influence is felt not just in Sin City's violence but also in its Pulp Fiction-style structure, which creates twisted continuity from multiple Miller yarns. Ruthless from the beginning, Sin City opens with a short vignette that mixes casual brutality with dialogue so over-the-top – "Her perfume is sweet promise that brings tears to my eyes" – that Miller was surely winking when he wrote it.

From there, Sin City jumps to scar-faced detective Hartigan (Bruce Willis), who's hunting a child-killing pervert (Nick Stahl) so well-connected that other cops simply let him get away with his hideous deeds. Hartigan is probably the only Sin City character with figurative heart – though his literal "bum ticker" causes much chest clutching and inner torment. Next up is semireformed troublemaker Marv (a prosthetically disguised Mickey Rourke), who declares a return to "the all-or-nothin' days" after his best gal (Jaime King) is snuffed out. Marv's quest eventually leads him to an isolated farm occupied by boyish monster Kevin (Elijah Wood); gleeful mayhem ensues.

The same farm reappears when Hartigan's thread picks up again. Despite being unjustly imprisoned for years, he has stubbornly protected the identity of the child-killing pervert's intended victim – who, to the hallelujahs of fanboys everywhere, grows up to be slithery saloon dancer Nancy (Jessica Alba). When Nancy's nabbed by the leering "Yellow Bastard," she's taken to Kevin's farm – turns out all the hardcore villains in Basin City are linked not just by their deadly instincts but also by their DNA.

Sin City's middle tale is its most luridly engaging. "Murderer with a new face" Dwight (Clive Owen) romances barmaid Shellie (Brittany Murphy), to the annoyance of her former fella, Jackie-Boy (Benicio Del Toro). A swirlie and plenty of threats later, the men take their business to Old Town, which is ruled by tough (yet model-gorgeous) prostitutes, including Dwight's onetime flame, Gail (Rosario Dawson). The resulting rumble leads to an extended, near farcical struggle to keep a severed head from tumbling into the wrong hands. When Dwight announces, "I'm on my feet, and every ounce of me wants to get some killing done," he could be speaking for Sin City's entire population.

With so many strong points – a stellar cast, lovingly rendered violence, marvelous attention to comic-book detail, and the thing with the severed head – Sin City regrettably falls short of perfection. It's easy to point out similarities to Pulp Fiction, another film stuffed with hard-boiled fantasies, antiheroes, and gallows humor. But Sin City's characters can be compromised by their allegiance to Miller's two-dimensional creations. In particular, Sin City's women are a depressingly unoriginal lot: hookers, waitresses, and exotic dancers (with varying degrees of hearts of gold and sexy combat skills sprinkled among them). The sole "dyke," parole officer Lucille (Carla Gugino, a long way from Spy Kids), mitigates her unattainability by appearing nearly naked in all her scenes.

Sin City's key male characters tend toward the despicable, but they're at least allowed some depth of feeling, conveyed in the movie's near constant voice-overs. And while every movie can't – and shouldn't – be Thelma and Louise, and the recent crop of female superhero flicks has produced dud (Catwoman) after dud (Elektra), even Pulp Fiction's boys club made way for Mia Wallace – a drug addict and gangster's wife, sure, but also a personality with substance and soul. However entertaining, Rodriguez and Miller's collaboration offers no such equivalent; it makes for a lopsided movie, one that ultimately tips Sin City's scales more toward small-time pulp-fiction amusement than big-time Pulp Fiction triumph. 'Sin City' opens Fri/1 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock for show times.