First we had images, now we have moving images from Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s neo-noir flick, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Based on Miller’s comic book series, Sin City, the film features Mickey Rourke, Josh Brolin, Jessica Alba, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and other people whose names don’t star with “J,” in a series of connected stories taking place in the same city.

Dwight McCarthy (Brolin) is a quiet, unassuming man caught up in a dangerous plot involving femme fatales, sadistic gangsters, money, and of course death. Note that Brolin is playing the same role as Clive Owen in the first Sin City movie, but he’s not replacing Owen – for context see the movies or read the comics.

Marv (Rourke) is a hulking, nearly unkillable man who may or may not be a psycho killer. He wakes up with a couple of dead bodies and no memory of  how they got there.

Johnny (Gordon-Levitt) is a gambler whose luck is tested when he goes up against the most powerful (and dangerous) man in the city.

Nancy Callahan (Alba) is an exotic dancer who survived an attack by vicious killer and the attempts of a corrupt system to cover it up. As she tries to move on, Nancy is troubled by the death of the man who saved her.

Like the comics, both movies don’t follow a linear timeline; the stories in A Dame to Kill For are sequels, prequels, and sidequels to those in the first movie. Thus, (SPOILER) dead characters like Rourke’s are able to show up.