Robert Rodriguez' lavish and lovingly created animation of Frank Miller's Sin City is so unfailingly true to its gory, gritty source that it has disturbed almost as many viewers as it has delighted. Creatively cast and brilliantly rendered, it truly has the look of a graphic novel come to life as a living, breathing comic strip. Seen in pristine digital projection, the brilliant hues splashed across film noir shadows and stark blacks and whites are gloriously luminescent. Even the blood that spills often and profusely is used to paint the character of each victim: the purity of white, the mortality of red, the cowardice of yellow.

The ensemble cast, which includes Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Benicio Del Toro, Carla Gugino, Mickey Rourke, Rosario Dawson and Clive Owen performed their scenes against a green-screen backdrop, where director Rodriquez later enveloped them with a computer generated environment that feels as right and as real as an on-location shoot. Ultraviolence that makes A Clockwork Orange pale in comparison seems to fill every other sequence of Sin CIty, and contrary to the comments of some that the film directs its brutality at women, the truth is that the men endure the majority of the merciless carnage. Gunshots, beatings, decapitations and most famously, castrations befall nearly every character at one time or another.

Corruption and cynicism drench the souls of every inhabitant of Sin City, save the characters of good cop Hartigan (Willis) and good girl Nancy (Alba). All seem resigned to their places in hell. Willis brings his gift for playing world-weary protectors to his character; Rourke and Owen portray the sympathetic anti-heroes; Rutger Hauer and Elijah Wood appear briefly but memorably as two faces of evil incarnate. As for the women, Jaime King is haunting as a classic Noir femme fatale, and newcomer Devon Aoki needs nothing more than her otherworldly eurasian looks to make the samurai sword wielding angel of death Miho an instant icon. A suggestion to Sin City's guest director Quentin Tarantino is to transplant a version of Miho into a future project, as he did with Angela Jones's death obsessed latina from Curdled to Pulp Fiction.