Sin City (18) HHHH Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke and Elijah Wood

UNDENIABLY cool, ultra-violent, morally dubious and highly entertaining with a cast to die for, Sin City is one of the must-see movies of the year. Adapted from Frank Miller's comic novels, Sin City is a nightmarish film noir fantasy where violence, darkness and rain are omnipresent.

Some dazzling direction by Robert Rodriguez and one scene by Quentin Tarantino and with Miller as a co-director means the movie is very much the vision of its creator who turned down previous offers to put Sin City on the silver screen.

It draws inspiration from Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and the world of gumshoes and squalid villains that inhabit the world of the crime novels of Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy.

Like Pulp Fiction, three stories are woven together and sometimes overlap.

A word of warning should be made. It is certainly not for the faint-hearted or squeamish.

In the best strand comeback king Mickey Rourke plays the lovestruck Marv who falls in love with the beautiful prostitute Goldie only to find her murdered by cannibal Elijah Wood.

He vows a terrible vengeance on all those responsible for her death and faithfully tries to keep his pledge.

In another story, Bruce Willis plays Hartigan, a former rogue cop who is the guardian angel of stripper Nancy (Jessica Alba) from a murderous rapist (Nick Stahl).

The third segment stars Clive Owen as a detective caught between murdered cop Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro) and dominatrix Gail (Rosario Dawson). Iwan Davies