Watch and review noir film - Sin City

Today, I watched the first series of Sin City. And I would like to write a review for this.

Sin City, also known as Frank Miller's Sin City, is a 2005 American neo-noir crime film. It is written by Frank Miller, produced and directed by Robert Rodriguez. It is based on Miller's graphic novel of the same name. It is really famous because there are many very famous actors and actress joined in.

This film is based on the first, third, and fourth books in Miller's original comic series. The Hard Goodbye is about a man who embarks on a brutal rampage in search of his one - time sweetheart's killer, killing anyone, even the police, that gets in his way of finding and killing her murderer. The Big Fat Kill focuses on an everyman getting caught in a street war between a group of prostitutes and a group of mercenaries, the police and the mob. That Yellow Bastard follows an aging police officer who protects a young woman from a grotesquely disfigured serial killer. The intro and outro of the film are based on the short story "The Customer is Always Right" which is collected in Booze, Broads & Bullets, the sixth book in the comic series.

The first thing about this film that really impresses me is the opening. Here is the opening:

First, it uses the establishing shot to show the city, it is dark, the colour is mainly black and white. When it arranges for the title - Sin City, it adds colour: red, which means danger, anger and blood. And the colour appears just like the blood that dyes the title. This shows that the city is dangerous and always have crime. I like this opening is because of the characters: it uses the characters look in comics and then adding the actors or actress name that who act this character. These comic looks give the narrative of each character in the film. Also, one another interesting thing is that the characters are in black and white, but the actors or actress name are in red. All the names are in the same size and colour, but when it changes to the names of directors, at the start it changes, not only the font but also the colour (the colour of the writer Frank Millers is in white). But as soon as the next person, the colour and the font style of the name change back to the same as the actors and actress.

Another thing that really makes me feel interesting is the colour. In this film, the main colour of it is similar to the film that in classic film noir era (the 1940s to 1950s) - black and white. But it highlights some specific objects by adding the colour.

For example, in part 1 That Yellow Bastard, the skin colour of the character Roark Junior is yellow.

Here, the yellow skin colour of Roark Junior is really conspicuous

This makes him really specific when the others are all in black and white. Also, it tells us that this guy is the Yellow Bastard. In addition, yellow means greedy, sexy, and bad things, this tells us that he is the villain in this narrative. Also, when the police officer John Hartigan killed Junior and walked away with Nacy Callahan, the blood of Junior is not red - it is yellow.This shows that he killed the Yellow Bastard. 

Another example of colour is this woman:

Her red dress is really specific here. And red refers to danger, love, and blood, this may tell us that she might die. The red dress also shows her sexiness, which means she is really attractive. I think she has the femme fatale style.

I think in this film, the use of colour is very unique. Since they rendered most of the film in black and white while retaining or adding colour for selected objects.