Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's noir-inflected portmanteau Sin City offered a storehouse of lustrous CG imagery to global ad agencies, so it's surprising how much of this follow-up – technically a prologue, reviving several characters who met their makers in 2005 – still looks fresh, each frame now adorned with Rodriguez's typically playful 3D.

The weakness is in the material: these are second-string Miller yarns, populated in a couple of instances by second-choice faces: Josh Brolin for Clive Owen and Jamie Chung for Devon Aoki. Two out of its three tales prove snappy enough: Joseph Gordon-Levitt is nicely spry as a gambler crossing the wrong guy, while a pay-off finally rescues Jessica Alba from bland gyration. Only with the centrepiece, a torturous quadruple indemnity with the reliably bosomy Eva Green luring middle-aged masochists to their doom, does the pulp become punitive and hard to swallow. But the vision remains uncompromising and it dazzles far more than any sequel should.

• Comments have been reopened to coincide with the film's Australian release.