DARK, DARK CITY

REVIEWED - SIN CITY: Sin City is a comic book come to life, and Donald Clarke means that in a good way

AFTER interesting attempts by Warren Beatty in Dick Tracy, Ang Lee in Hulk and Guillermo del Toro in Hellboy, we finally have a comic-book adaptation that looks as if it slipped straight off the page and onto the screen.

Sin City, its inky backgrounds largely created by computers in Robert Rodriguez' garage, feels quite extraordinary. Most of those pesky greys that shaded the work of the original noir cinematographers have been eliminated and we are left with a world that - occasional splashes of scarlet blood and waves of golden tresses aside - really is properly in black and white. The characters are similarly clearly defined. Men with heads like fridges kill more than they should because they love women with lips the size of breasts and breasts the size of medicine balls.

Less Raymond Chandler, more James Ellroy, Sin City, which sticks so closely to Frank Miller's original graphic novels that it could be described as a high-tech flick-book, is not so much noir as the stock you might get if you boiled noir's bones for days on end. It's a little exhausting and more than a little one-note. It is so heavily stylised that audiences may well not have the patience for the two sequels Miller and Rodriguez plan.

Its underwhelming female cast - A-list actresses could be forgiven for approaching this gaggle of prostitutes and murder victims with caution - is roughed up both literally and figuratively by their classier male counterparts. But this remains the most poundingly exciting film currently playing in cinemas.

The picture weaves together three of Miller's stories: John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) tracks down the exotic dancer (Jessica Alba, hopeless) who, years earlier, he saved from the attentions of a child killer; Marv (Mickey Rourke) goes up against the nerdy cannibal (Elijah Wood) who murdered his girlfriend; and Dwight (Clive Owen) helps out a glamorous posse of vigilante prostitutes after they foolishly kill a cop.

The protagonists do rather blend into one, but Mickey Rourke - whose hideous facial prosthetics fail to make him look any weirder than he does in real life - brilliantly holds the attention with the most arresting performance he has given in over a decade.

Robert Rodriguez - as usual editing, directing, composing and producing - has generously allowed Miller a credit as co-director (old pal Quentin Tarantino also helmed a single scene). His munificence is rewarded with a film that finally fulfils the promise shown in energetic, messy early work such as El Mariachi and Desperado. But only time will tell if Sin City points the way to cinema's future or if it is just an arresting one-off.