Hang a left out of Sin City and you eventually arrive at Sin City 2, a deodorised postcode specialising in stage-managed danger. On the face of it, the landscape appears identical to Rodriguez and Miller's original 2005 picture. It boasts the same lush comic-book visuals, the same rasping gumshoe narration and many of the old familiar locals (Mickey Rourke's beat-up pug; Jessica Alba's gun-toting pole dancer). But the thrill has gone or at the very least dwindled. This sequel offers a congested spaghetti junction of interlocking stories, all of which are leading no place in particular.

This is not to say there is not some fun to be had amid the overheated twists and turns. Rodriguez and Miller trade in disreputable teenage kicks and they lay the style on with a trowel. The film is also played with the requisite gusto by Josh Brolin as a hapless private eye and Eva Green as his raven-haired femme fatale. I'm tempted to view Green's character as the perfect embodiment of the directors' cock-eyed sexual politics, in that she is a beautiful witch, at once arousing and deadly. Time and again, Rodriguez and Miller invite us to ogle her and then detest her, ogle her and then repent. The effect is akin to being led around a red-light district by a conflicted Pentecostal preacher. He's pointing out the sights and bellowing damnation in your ear.