I know it’s a ‘sin,’ but I just don’t get it

I think there’s a split in this country. And, no, it has nothing to do with Red/Blue State sensibilities. It’s not even the great unspoken division of America, the ever-widening gap between the ultra-rich and the desperately poor.

The split is one of age. It’s the split that has existed from the time that Ahoo took a look at the spear that Ahoo Jr. was throwing at a charging mastodon , sniffed in disdain and then charged in, swinging his cudgel (bye-bye Papa Ahoo). But in this day of digital magic and instant gratification, the split is more pronounced than ever.

I can say that because of “Sin City.” Every person I know younger than 30, men and women, boys and girls, likes this Robert Rodriguez/ Frank Miller -directed exercise in the neo-neo-noir. I, on the other, hand am still scratching my head.

“Sin City,” in short, is a three-story blend of Quentin Tarantinoesque themes. There’s the ready-to-retire cop named Hartigan (Bruce Willis) who wants to protect young Nancy Callahan (Mackenzie Vega at age 11, Jessica Alba at age 19) from a rape-murderer. There’s Marv (Mickey Rourke) who, after, uh, “connecting” with the beautiful Goldie (Jaime King), is accused of her murder and then who spends the rest of the film trying to find the real killer. Finally, there’s Dwight ( Clive Owen ), the tough guy who, Chili Palmer style, tries to protect women who end up being a lot tougher than even he could imagine.

All of them, and in fact the movie as a whole, are rendered in a style that is just eye-popping to watch. It’s all light and shadow and comic frames lifted almost literally from the page, with the occasional splash of color (red and/or yellow). As my daughter, Rachel, says, “If you love pure cinema, you’re going to love ‘Sin City.’ ” Plus, Rourke has never been better – and despite his strangeness, he’s been pretty good in a number of films .

Hey, I LOVE pure cinema.Yet … yet … here are the problems that I had with “Sin City.”

1, The first half hour moves by quickly. But then, as the stories begin to intertwine, it begins to d-r-a-g-g-g-g-g.

2, Rodriguez /Miller try too hard to make the film a neo kind of noir, even beyond what Tatantino did in “Pulp Fiction,” and in the process its becomes a noir parody. As Manohla Dargis of the NYTimes says, it’s more Mickey Spillane than Raymond Chandler . Bang, you dirty broad, you’re dead.

3, Which brings up something else: The film is blatantly sexist and maybe even misogynistic (the naked women, even the tough women are “dames,” Josh Hartnett’s loving killer).

4, The “love” between Hartigan (Bruce Willis) and Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) is another one of those wishful-thinking kinds of scenarios that, if there wasn’t already enough reason to resent them, the French are famous for (see Claude Berri’s 2002 film “The Housekeeper,” in which a balding middle-age guy ends up having a relationship with a young-but-needy beauty). Mon dieu.

5. The violence is so over-the-top that it makes Sam Peckinpah seem like Ron Howard. The testicle-tearing scene was particularly tasteful.

6. It’s Tarantino without the humor, except for the scene that he directed (a corpse played by Benecio Del Toro with a gun slide imbedded in his head heckling Dwight as he attempts to dump the body)

I’m gonna see the movie again. Hell, I have to see the movie again. I owe my daughter that much (she saw “The Royal Tenenbeums,” which she initially hated, a second time because I told her that she would like it if she did, and she ended up loving it). I don’t know if I’ll end up loving “Sin City.”

But maybe I’ll at least feel less old in my bones .