Sin City: A Dame To Kill For

Graphic novels, attuned to Mickey Spillane's turn of phrase, incorporating dangerous dames with contours to wrap your tongue around, have seldom been reproduced on screen with any degree of success. Now it's happening. Robert Rodriguez's second bite of the bullet is the real deal.

Drive the back roads to Old Town where Senator Roark (Powers Boothe) controls the muscle, Nancy (Jessica Alba) is the hot ticket at the strip joint and Merv (Mickey Rourke) takes no truck with two bit jerks, tooled up or shot through. You don't venture into this steaming snake pit without balls of steel.

Money talks. Not as loud as the gun, nor as fast as the blade, nor as deadly as the arrow. Johnny (Joseph Gordon Levitt) has a fistful of greens and he's here to take on Roark at the poker table. He doesn't know yet, but learns later, that winning is bad for his health.

And then there's Ava (Eva Green), the femme fatale, married to some bookish billionaire, who enjoys nothing better than seducing stronger men, like Dwight (Josh Brolin), before the sun dries the blood on the sidewalk. Her motives may be venal and her looks as sleek as silver but when she plays for keeps she expect compliance and the rest of the night in his arms.

The sky is neon. It's never anything else in these stories. There will be killing; there will be fire; there will be passion; there will be pain. Brutality is the currency in Old Town. Living ain't long, brother, and dying is cheap.

Monochrome, slashed with colour, has been tailored for the graphic artwork. Reproduction of Frank Miller's vision is pitch perfect. This time we have what the original Sin City lacked, style and content dancing to the same beat.