Visit ‘Sin City’ at your own risk

A bloody lollapalooza, “Sin City” splatters several hundred pages of graphic (and we mean graphic) novel across an unsuspecting movie screen. Minute for minute, it’s an inventive result. Taken as a feature-length movie, it’s too much – like someone drumming on your brainpan for 126 minutes.

This film is co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, based on Miller’s acclaimed comic book of the same title. Oh, there’s one other hand in there, too: Quentin Tarantino, a “special guest director” responsible for one sequence.

Miller’s sordid world is fractured into three (or so) main storylines. One follows a freakish tough-guy-to-end-all-tough-guys, Marv, whose face is part bull, part steam-press accident. The actor playing him is not recognizable, but it’s Hollywood casualty Mickey Rourke in his biggest role in years. Rourke’s hard-boiled narration (has he been gargling with thumbtacks?) sets the movie’s tone. Miller’s dialogue is so pulpy it ought to be strained through a sieve before serving.

Marv is hunting down the creeps who murdered a prostitute. She was, by his account, the only woman that ever showed him affection. This cements the movie’s theme of nearly subhuman men driven to violent excess by the desire to protect or avenge women.

Another big slab of story has Dwight (Clive Owen, very cool) protecting his current squeeze (Brittany Murphy) from a loathsome thug (Benicio Del Toro, exaggeratedly made up to resemble … hmm … with that jutting chin and nose, he sure looks like Quentin Tarantino).

Dwight later reunites with an old flame (Rosario Dawson) who now helps police a section of Sin City with a group of no-nonsense hookers. This story ends up at some tar pits for a memorable meltdown.

Bruce Willis stars in a wraparound story, about a cop who gives up everything in order to protect a little girl from the evil attention of a politician’s creeped-out son (Nick Stahl). Jessica Alba plays a stripper.

You may have noticed that the men are thugs and the women hookers. Miller’s vision is not a wholesome one. As though to underline this, virtually every scene has a brutal beating, some dismemberment, or multiple gunshot wounds. The barrage of this depravity is probably a lot easier to handle when it’s laid out in a comic book.

Robert Rodriguez has been faithful to Miller’s comic, and the film is in black-and-white with regular eruptions of color (spurting blood, blond hair, a red dress). There’s no pretense toward realism here; Rodriguez is making a comic book movie, and his angles are stilted, his lighting melodramatic.

The film’s sets and backgrounds were digitally rendered, allowing Rodriguez to run amok with his production. Like “Sky Captain,” the actors mostly performed in front of blank green screen, with surroundings added later. The results are more effective here than they were in “Sky Captain,” perhaps because of the unreal setting, perhaps because it takes place in perpetual night.

Along with the all-star team mentioned above, the acting roster includes Elijah Wood as a silent and unnerving nerd-pervert; Carla Gugino as a naked floozy; and 1980s mainstays Rutger Hauer and Powers Booth. In a puzzling prologue (shot as a test sequence), Josh Hartnett plays an assassin.

If you have a taste for extremes, “Sin City” will take you there. For comic-book enthusiasts, it’s the film of the year, yet it’s very hard to recommend to anybody else.

“Sin City”HHH

All-out assault: A comic-book lollapalooza derived from Frank Miller’s graphic novels, this mostly black-and-white picture is unrelentingly inventive … and assaultive. The unsavory roster of thugs and hookers is filled out by Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Bruce Willis and Jessica Alba.

Rated: R rating is for violence, nudity, language.

Now showing: tk

“Sin City” HHH

All-out assault: A comic-book lollapalooza derived from Frank Miller’s graphic novels, this mostly black-and-white picture is unrelentingly inventive … and assaultive. The unsavory roster of thugs and hookers is filled out by Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Bruce Willis and Jessica Alba.

Rated: R rating is for violence, nudity, language.

Now showing: Everett 9, Galaxy, Loews at Alderwood, Marysville, Mountlake, Stanwood, Cinerama, Neptune, Oak Tree, Pacific Place, Woodinville, Cascade, Oak Harbor Plaza.