"Sin City"

Despite the fact that so much of "Sin City" was constructed digitally (the actors performed against green screens; backdrops and details were filled in digitally after the fact), there's something refreshingly elemental about it. Unlike, say, the visually intriguing but empty "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," "Sin City" is a technological achievement that nonetheless recognizes that there are still plenty of human beings who value movies over mere achievements. Miller's "Sin City" books are Old Testament-style tales of vengeance set in a gritty noir-fantasy world. His black-and-white drawings are so stark they resemble stencils -- they're like urban versions of medieval woodcuts, fables of right and wrong reduced to their barest elements.

The movie "Sin City" is also black-and-white -- which means, of course, that it's really black, white and infinite shades of gray -- accented with judiciously used splotches of color: The skin of a creepy villain glows jaundice yellow; a curvaceous blonde wears a crimson dress that matches the juicy color of her lips. Those colors float on the velvety surface of the picture, a tribute to the notion that all black-and-white movies are really in color, anyway -- colors that we fill in for ourselves. And in some scenes, blood is white instead of dark -- maybe a challenge to the way we treat bleeding bodies as business-as-usual in action movies.

In addition to directing, Rodriguez also shot and edited the movie (he also wrote some of the music). And while what I'm about to say most likely amounts to heresy in cinematography circles, he manages to capture at least the spirit, if not all the stark, eerie beauty, of the great film noir cinematographers -- people like Russell Metty, who shot Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil," as well as the numerous journeyman cinematographers whose names are less well-known but whose work amounts to a kind of textbook of the craft.

As a champion and protector of traditional filmmaking technique -- that is to say, of movies shot on film -- I'm pained to admit that "Sin City" looks as great as it does. Rodriguez goes for all the right noir touches, translated directly from Miller's drawings: Nighttime rain falls down in tinselly sheets. Figures are framed in chiaroscuro doorways. A heart-shaped bed is shot from on high, like a candy-box valentine to illicit love.

Maybe I should be railing against some perceived soullessness or lack of warmth in the visual surface of "Sin City." But the sorry truth is that while plenty of "real" cinematographers would jump at the chance to shoot a noir-style black-and-white picture, those types of movies just don't get made today. A cinematographer can hone the craft for years, and be fully devoted to it, and end up making much of his or her living off remakes of old cartoon shows and '70s TV series. How can we fault Rodriguez for using the technology he's got to such astonishing effect? Whatever his means, by caring enough to re-create and reimagine classic noir, he honors it.

I don't want "Sin City" to represent the future of filmmaking. But it says something that "Sin City" is the first mainstream American picture I've seen this year that feels even remotely brash or original. It's a hard, viciously funny little movie, one with all the subtlety of a billy club. But there's artistry here, too, shining out like the harsh wedge of a flashlight beam. Although "Sin City" isn't, per se, a Hollywood movie (everybody knows that movies are no longer made in Hollywood anyway), as a big Miramax release, it does qualify as "Hollywood." Some moviegoers, and probably quite a few critics, are likely to denounce it as needlessly sleazy, deplorably violent and downright repugnant. But "Sin City" is the movie it needs to be: A rough beast crawling forth from a town without pity, it's gotta have balls -- or else.

• View blog reactions