Once upon a time, there was a little town called Basin City.. then corruption took charge, mercenaries moved in, cops got dirty, you know the drill... Welcome to Sin City!

In a prologue, a tuxedoed Josh Hartnett flirts with and then kills a hot society gal (Marley Shelton) on a city balcony. Then we cut to the first part of a story about Hartigan (Bruce Willis), a tough cop about to retire because of his bad heart. He rescues a kidnapped little girl (Nancy) from a pedophile (Nick Stahl). We leave this story for a while to focus on Marv (Mickey Rourke) a grotesque-looking ex-con who sleeps with a prostitute (Jaime King) then gets framed for her murder and teams up with her twin sister to find the killer. The trail takes them to a creepy cannibalistic serial killer (Elijah Wood.... Yes, Elijah Wood) and on from there.

Another story features Dwight (Clive Owen), an ex photo-journalist who protects the ladies of the red light district Old Town when they need to get rid of the corpse of a sleazy undercover cop named Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro). Dwight has something going with both a barmaid (Brittany Murphy) and the head lady of Old Town Gail (Rosario Dawson).