Written by: Susan Granger
http://www.susangranger.com

Welcome to Basin City, a.k.a. Sin City. This town with its rain-slick streets beckons to the tough, the depraved, the brokenhearted. Crooked cops. Sexy dames. Desperate vigilantes. Some seek revenge. Others lust for redemption. And then there are those hoping for a little of both.

So begins Robert Rodriguez's stylized, noir translation of writer/artist Frank Miller's pulpy novels, narrated by Josh Hartnett and blending three plots and a multitude of characters. Bruce Willis is an aging, honest detective. Brittany Murphy is a pistol-packing barmaid. Jessica Alba is an exotic dancer. Carla Gugino is a parole officer. Rosario Dawson is a streetwalker. Jaime King is a doomed hooker. Then there's Mickey Rourke as macho, vengeance-seeking ex-con, Clive Owen as a rugged psychopath, Alexis Bledel as a perverted prostitute, Nick Stahl as a pedophile, Benicio Del Toro as a corrupt cop and Elijah Wood as a cannibal. Filled with murder and mutilation, it's not a nice neighborhood, particularly with a severed head rolling around.

Robert Rodriguez ("Desperado," "Spy Kids") defied the Directors Guild by designating Frank Miller as his co-director with "guest" Quentin Tarantino. The collaboration delivers an authentic comic-book movie. The non-stop barrage of graphic cruelty and violence, along with pushed-up breasts and bondage, is as deliberate as it is shocking. Inspiration credit goes to Mickey Spillane, the E.C. comics of the '50s and "Pulp Fiction" - with kudos to the computer-generated visuals.

Yet it's such an implausible fantasy that there's no sense of suspense or peril, and it's far too long.

On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Sin City" sizzles with a sullen, audacious 8, evoking Pauline Kael's allusion to an Italian movie poster that said it all: "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang."

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