Hello again, everyone, and welcome to the column that believes it's better to be adored by a few than read by anyone. This week we cruise the mean streets of Sin City, our helpful guides being Robert Rodriguez (whom you may recall as the director of the Mariachi and Spy Kids trilogies, not to mention From Dusk Till Dawn) and Frank Miller (who's partly to blame for the script of Robocop 2 and got stabbed in the head with a pen by Colin Farrell in Daredevil).

However, the well-read amongst you will be aware that while Miller's record at the cinema ain't exactly gilt-edged, his track record when it comes writing and drawing comics is peerless - for one thing, the imminently blockbusterous Batman Begins owes a significant debt to Miller's Year One, while he made Daredevil famous and actually created Elektra. Away from the spandex crowd, Miller is probably best known for his painfully stylish series of Sin City graphic novels - and its these that the new movie is based upon.

The film is set on the streets of Basin City (geddit), capital of the state of total moral collapse, where the police, the politicians, and the church seemingly strive to outdo each other when it comes to venality and decadence, and the blood flows like tippex every night. Locked in perpetual darkness, every single inhabitant seems to be either mad, bad, or sad, but at least this means they all have quite interesting stories to relate. And the film follows three of them - jaded cop Hartigan (Bruce Willis) battles to protect an innocent young girl (Jessica Alba, an actress whose visibility is about to rocket - ho ho ho) from a gnome-like pervert (Nick Stahl). Enigmatic loner Dwight (Clive Owen) tries to help the hookers of Sin City (all of whom seem to be heavily-armed killing machines, obviously) maintain their truce with the police department in the face of interference by the mob. And borderline-superhuman nutcase Marv (Mickey Rourke) sets out to avenge a prostitute (Jaime King) who was kind to him before she was murdered by a kung-fu fighting cannibal serial killer (Elijah Wood. No, really).

This probably isn't the best choice of movie to take your sweet old grandma to, unless she really gets off on dismemberment, torture, immorality, generally astounding levels of violence and ickiness, and a really special scene where Bruce Willis rips someone's knob off with his bare hands. (Betcha that doesn't get picked as a 'highlight of the movie year' come the December review shows.) As you may or may not recall, it normally takes a lot to convince me that this level of really extreme violence is justified, but in Sin City's case it probably is, given that the film does try to say things about morality and the gore isn't actually played for laughs. And it has to be said that it does form part of one of the most distinctive visions to be brought to the cinema in some time - a virtually perfect recreation of the original Sin City strips, with individual panels being imitated. The central irony, that stories with a morality consisting solely of varying shades of grey are told largely in black and white, survives. It looks fantastic, luminous monochrome deep-focus cinematography creating a world both utterly fantastical yet grimily realistic.

But solid performances from an impressive ensemble cast keep your attention on the stories, for the most part. The common theme of the three stories is one of dodgy alpha-males finding a sort of redemption through their relationships with women they idealise. Their willingness to do anything for their girls borders on the masochistic, if we're honest, but to be honest it's all that separates them from the scum they do battle with. In a funny sort of way Sin City's thoroughly unreconstructed gender politics mark it out as one of the most romantic films of recent months - admittedly Bruce Willis shooting somebody in the nuts (yes, this happens too) isn't everyone's idea of romance but there you go.

Hang on a mo' though! A hardboiled, pulpy noiry sort of thriller? With a sort of anthology structure? Where the internal chronology is a bit fishy? And a lot of violence? And Bruce Willis, giving a pretty good performance? Yes, you guessed it, Quentin Tarantino pops up as a 'special guest director' (though he thankfully resists the temptation to appear in front of the camera). To be honest I'm not sure why he bothered as the sequence he's responsible for isn't particularly long nor distinguished. Presumably Bob Rodriguez doesn't like being pestered any more than anyone. This movie certainly shouldn't need Tarantino's name plastered on it in order to be successful. It's skilfully put together, memorable in all sorts of ways, and combines arthouse aesthetics with a charnel house sensibility in a manner guaranteed to meet with the approval of a good many cinemagoers. Not one I'd recommend without serious qualifications, but still one of the outstanding movies of the year so far.