With a huge, well-chosen cast and the blessing of Miller, who was on set as Rodriguez's co-director, Sin City is a gloriously stylized world unlike anything you've seen before on screen.

For all its astronomical body count, Sin City is brazenly, thrillingly alive.

While Sin City on screen evokes the same feeling of bottomless decadence and dread that the novels do, there is one crucial difference -- you can put the novels down.

For all the fantastic performances on display (along with mostly female flesh), the most essential ingredient Sin City possesses is its willingness to go all in.