[4] The film stars an ensemble cast led by Jessica Alba, Benicio del Toro, Brittany Murphy, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, and Elijah Wood, and featuring Alexis Bledel, Powers Boothe, Michael Clarke Duncan, Rosario Dawson, Devon Aoki, Carla Gugino, Rutger Hauer, Jaime King, Michael Madsen, Nick Stahl, and Makenzie Vega among others.

That Yellow Bastard focuses on an aging police officer who protects a young woman from a grotesquely disfigured serial killer.

The intro and outro of the film are based on the short story "The Customer is Always Right" which is collected in Booze, Broads & Bullets, the sixth book in the comic series.

[6][7] A sequel also directed by Miller and Rodriguez was released in 2014, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, but failed to match the success of its predecessor.

On the docks of Sin City, aging police officer John Hartigan tries to stop serial child-killer Roark Junior from raping and killing his fourth known victim, eleven-year-old Nancy Callahan.

Marv kills the cops except for their leader, who reveals Cardinal Patrick Henry Roark arranged for Goldie's murder.

Marv goes to Old Town, Sin City's prostitute-run red-light district, to learn more about Goldie and is captured by her twin sister, Wendy.

They realize Jackie Boy is actually Detective Lieutenant Jack Rafferty of the Basin City Police, considered a "hero cop" by the press.

Dwight takes the bodies to a tar pit, where he is ambushed by an ex-IRA mercenary hired by mob boss Wallenquist.

The mercenary flees to the sewer with Jackie Boy's severed head but Dwight and Miho retrieve it and return to Old Town.

The deformed man ambushes Hartigan and reveals himself as Roark Junior, disfigured by years of treatment to regenerate his body parts.

In Roger Ebert's review of the film, he recalled Rodriguez's speech during production of Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams: "This is the future!

"[8] The film was noted throughout production for Rodriguez's plan to stay faithful to the source material, unlike most other comic book adaptations.

These scenes were later added in the release of the Sin City Collectors DVD, which also split the books into four separate stories.

Three directors received credit for Sin City: Miller, Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino, the last for directing the drive-to-the-pits scene in which Dwight talks with a dead Jack Rafferty (Benicio del Toro).

[11] Buena Vista Home Entertainment released a two-disc Blu-ray version with DTS-HD Master Audio, which includes a theatrical and extended, unrated, recut of 147 minutes, on April 21, 2009.

The website's critical consensus reads: "Visually groundbreaking and terrifically violent, Sin City brings the dark world of Frank Miller's graphic novel to vivid life.

[14] A 2017 data analysis of Metacritic reviews by Gizmodo UK found Sin City to be the third most critically divisive film of recent years.

[16] Roger Ebert awarded the film four out of four stars, describing it as "a visualization of the pulp noir imagination, uncompromising and extreme.

"[18] Some reviews focused predominantly on the film's more graphic content, criticizing it for a lack of "humanity", the overwhelmingly dominant themes of violence against women, typically of an exploitative or sexualized nature.

William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer described it as a celebration of "helpless people being tortured" and "a disturbing gorefest".

[19] The New York Times critic Manohla Dargis gave credit for Rodriguez's "scrupulous care and obvious love for its genre influences", but noted that "it's a shame the movie is kind of a bore" because the director's vision seems to prevail on the intensity of reading a graphic novel.

[20] In a more lighthearted piece focusing on the progression of films and the origins of Sin City, fellow Times critic A. O. Scott, identifying Who Framed Roger Rabbit as its chief cinematic predecessor, argued that "Something is missing – something human.

Don't let the movies fool you: Roger Rabbit was guilty," with regard to the increasing use of digitisation within films to replace the human elements.

He applauds the fact Rodriguez "has rendered a gorgeous world of silvery shadows that updates the expressionist cinematography of postwar noir" but bemoans that several elements of "old film noirs has been digitally broomed away", resulting instead in a film that "offers sensation without feeling, death without grief, sin without guilt, and, ultimately, novelty without surprise".

Production for the sequel began in October 2012 with Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller directing a script co-written by them and William Monahan.

[28] The film was based mainly on A Dame to Kill For, the second book in the Sin City series by Miller, and also included the short story "Just Another Saturday Night" from the Booze, Broads, & Bullets collection, as well as two original stories written by Miller for the film, titled "The Long Bad Night" and "Nancy's Last Dance".

Actors Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Rosario Dawson and Jessica Alba all reprised their roles in the sequel, amongst others.

Stephen L'Heureux, who produced the second film, would have overseen the series with Sin City creator Frank Miller.