The mean and moody comic book adaptation Sin City was riding high at the top of the US box office at the weekend, taking an estimated $28.1m and knocking chick-flick comedy Beauty Shop into second place.

Robert Rodriguez's take on Frank Miller's noirish comic book tales stars Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Benicio Del Toro, Jessica Alba and Clive Owen. It includes a section directed by long-time Rodriguez cohort Quentin Tarantino, and industry insiders had tipped it to beat the $30m mark, following a high-profile marketing campaign.

A Wednesday opening for the Queen Latifah vehicle Beauty Shop turned out to be a mistake. Just $3.8m of the Barbershop 2 spin-off's $17.3m haul was taken in the days preceding the weekend. Both the original Barbershops performed better, with openings of $24m and $21m respectively.

In third place was the black girl/white boy comedy Guess Who, starring Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac. A shallow update of 1967's then-incendiary movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, in which Katharine Hepburn brings home a black man played by Sidney Poitier, it managed $13m in its second week.

Further down the top 10 was the animated comedy Robots, which took another $10m to pass the $100m mark. The Sandra Bullock sequel Miss Congeniality 2 managed fifth place with just $8.4m in its second week. US critics have not warmed to the return of Sandra Bullock as the homely cop who realises that a bit of strategically-placed slap will instantly transform her into a man-magnet.