In a year when it seemed that every protagonist, from the Bat Cave, via Hogwarts, to the Volcanoes of Mustafar, was wrapped in terminology more appropriate for a poorly presented egg - "hardboiled", "gritty exterior", "dark centre" - Sin City proved the one movie that really hammered the hyperbole home. Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller pitched the brutal yet touchingly naïve content of the latter's graphic novellas into a blender, tossed in the conventions of film noir and added a slug of sultriness before pouring out a dose of digital filmmaking as beautiful as its protagonists are ugly. The directors' heady concoction may have turned some stomachs - it was branded (unfairly) as misogynistic and (fairly) as unashamedly machismo - but no other comic book rendition comes as close to capturing the essence of its progenitor.