Sin City Trailer (Crime Research)

 

 

Breif Overview of Sin City

 

Sin City, also known as Frank Miller's Sin City, is a 2005 American crime thriller film written, produced and directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez. It is a neo-noir based on Miller's graphic novel series of the same name.

The film is primarily based on three of Miller's works. The Hard Goodbye: 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 a street war between a group of prostitutes and a group of mercenaries, the police, and the mob; and That Yellow Bastard: Follows an aging police officer who protects a young woman from a grotesquely disfigured serial killer.

The film stars an ensemble cast including Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Benicio del Toro, Carla Gugino, Rutger Hauer, Jaime King, Michael Madsen, Brittany Murphy, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Nick Stahl, Bruce Willis and Elijah Wood

Trailer Analysis

The trailer begins, like the other trailers, with a distribution logo ‘Dimension Films’ and ‘Troublemaker Studios’. Troublemaker being relevant as founded by Robert Rodriguez and also director of Sin City. As the trailer builds up there is a non-diegetic, mysterious and slow music which also sounds action based. There are a few banging sounds which can connote guns. The shot of Marv dissolves to an image of a woman, where there is colour illustrated. There is then a quick, long shot of two police cars; the shot doesn’t look real, almost as though it’s a cartoon reflecting back to the narrative being unrealistic. The cars are outside, where we realise that it is night, this can connote crime as depicted in the dark so nobody can witness.

The shot fades to black where we see another mid shot of a female character, where the background is misty, connoting an eerie sense. The character looks innocent as she is wearing crosses that stand out. The character is small compared to the majority of the shot indicating her innocence further. The dissolve transition may indicate that the separate stories interlink with one another. There is a mid shot of the dependent looking girl, which zooms in to her face as the woman says ‘’helpless little girl’’ signifying her vulnerability further. Additionally, she looks younger than most of the other characters being portrayed, signifying her purity in comparison to them. There is a close up shot of a sword, which indicates further the significance of the weapons to the story. There is the indication to the rain again, which is a common motif within the ‘Sin City’ products that I have analysed highlighting a suppressive feel to the atmosphere. We see Marv again, where the camera slowly pans up him. The camera then cuts to a character holding a gun, which then quickly cuts up him, perhaps indicating that he is a distorted figure within the film. The camera focuses on his face for a while, with him looking directly at the camera, giving him a fierce and dominant persona.

There is then a line up of shots containing the actors and their name. The writing is a similar font to the ‘Sin City’ sign at the end of the trailer. The writing is red, and looks abraded; some of the letters look as though they are gun shots. The deformation effect to the writing suggests a portentous indication to the film. There is then a few action shots, one where there is a female character, who throws a weapon, she is wearing dark clothing and has a leg showing, suggesting that she may be a seductive figure, like a lot of the other women, in the trailer, are indicated to be.  There is a cartoon version of two characters previously shown in the trailer accumulating to the reflections of Miller’s comics. Additionally there is an unrealistic shot of a character with a yellow substance on his hand.