For every beating Hollywood has dished out to fanboys over the years, all will soon be forgiven. Sin City, based on Frank Miller's bleak and brutal series of graphic novels, is arriving on the big screen. And it brings with it a pedigree to make every geek swoon: Miller himself, the William Faulkner of comics dweebdom, the man who rescued Batman with his brilliant The Dark Knight Returns, not only approves of the adaptation, he's also the codirector.

Just how big is this news? For us mortals, it may be a bit of a shrug; unless you have a passionate opinion about the lameness of organic webshooters, chances are you'll wonder what all the hubbub is about. But for those who may or may not reside in a basement bedroom, Miller's direction (with the help of Robert Rodriguez) spells nerd orgasm. After years of watching beloved properties cruelly molested by the likes of Stephen Norrington and the ridiculously named Pitof (responsible for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Catwoman, disrespectively), not to mention the granddaddy of comic character abuse, Joel Schumacher, Sin City is a major coup. Here finally, after all the hack jobs, is the definitive comic-to-screen adaptation: faithful, unflinching, pure.

At least, isn't it pretty to think so?

In purely aesthetic terms, Sin City is without a doubt the ultimate comic-book movie. Dialogue, sets, costumes, even framing--each has been thoroughly copped from the pages of Miller's comics, almost to the point of absurdity. To call the film an adaptation is a massive understatement; this isn't a translation, it's a cut-and-paste job, bringing Miller's twisted vision directly to the screen in all its unfiltered glory. The result is one of the most daring and beautifully made films you'll ever see--too bad, then, that it's as thin as the pages the comic was printed on.

In Miller's mean little world, Basin City--nicknamed "Sin City" by the locals--is an ungodly sewer where all women are whores and all men know how to take a beating. In other words, it's a city of clichés--a gruesome goulash of every misconstrued element of film noir, packaged with enough violence to shock Sam Peckinpah. On the silent page, such a world is free from limits; on the screen, however, in full Dolby glory, it can be a wince-inducing slog. There's a major difference between reading "CRRRRAAACCCKKKK!" and hearing bones getting turned to dust. Where Sin City fails is in transferring hyperbolic nastiness--all the sensations artists and writers take liberties to illustrate and dramatize--to the screen without forsaking the credibility the best comics manage to keep, despite their own ridiculousness. Because of its slavish faithfulness, the film is miserably dark and unnecessarily brutal, a mess of punctured groins, severed limbs, and more beatings than you can possibly imagine.

It's also malnourished. The three stories in Sin City offer little beyond visceral thrill: There's the weary cop with a bum ticker (Bruce Willis) who eventually gets his man; there's the lonely monster (Mickey Rourke, buried beneath pounds of makeup--at least, I think it's makeup) who seeks vengeance for a slain hooker; and there's the corrupt cop whose corpse means a major hassle for a lethal man named Dwight (Clive Owen, impeccable as always). These plotlines flirt with each other, as every post-Pulp Fiction fake-noir must, but none is really strong enough to stand on its own (of the three, the one featuring Rourke is by far the best, but even it swims in the shallow end of the dramatic pool), and when combined, they amount to nothing more than empty thrills.

As a result, Sin City--despite its visual bravura--is as temporary as the smoke wafting from every impeccably photographed cigarette. Even the sight of Jessica Alba gyrating around a pole can't rescue the film's fleeting nature. You can argue that Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez have made one of the coolest movies in the world (aesthetically, at least); what you can't argue is that they've made a memorable one. Adolescent boys (and those still mired in adolescence) will surely love it--everyone else will most likely leave annoyed and exhausted.