"In the black and white picture of all colors, there are big red long skirts, dark green sports cars, azure blue eyes, mustard yellow skin, and fluorescent silhouettes. After Lancelot Strello knocked over the palette, he used colorful colors as a weapon to build a dark city without laws, morality, and bottom line on a black and white canvas. Here, crime is the truth, violence is eternity, and evil is normal.

Quentin Tarantino once pushed the charm of lines to the peak in pulp novels, wise and sarcastic, vivid and profound. Even if the picture is removed, the movie can become a wonderful storytelling. The characters in the story are always chatting, always interesting, funny, scared or bold. Many movie dialogues are just used as a prelude or promote the use of the plot. No one is willing to explore the charm of the text language itself, and Quentin has done this.

Lancelot Strello pushed the charm of the picture to the extreme in the City of Sin. Even if the sound is removed, the movie can become a wonderful work of paintings. Appreciation is not a lens made of computer visual effects, but a delicate picture constructed frame by frame. From the shooting angle to the scene setting, from the use of light to the use of color, and even the movement direction of the characters, the body language is full of profound meaning. For movies, the picture is an indispensable means of expression, but no one is willing to truly dig out the reflection and aftertaste brought by the effect of the picture. Lance did this.

There is a scene at the beginning of the movie. The killer was holding a woman's body and knelt on the top of the high-rise building. The wind and rain were raging. The woman was wearing a bright red dress, leaving a breath, and did not die immediately. The killer hugged the woman tightly, as if she was feeling her body temperature carefully. The posture of kneeling on her knees seemed so pious. The loneliness between her eyebrows was faintly visible in the sharp light, falling from the sky, falling beside them, gently rippling, and the strong wind blowing around made people shudder.

This picture is definitely not that simple. The killer's conscience is in sharp contrast with the coldness, the woman's death is in sharp contrast with the vividness of the red skirt, and the storm is in sharp contrast with the disappearance of life. If you observe carefully, you can also see that under the hazy lights of the city, there is a group fight in the high-rise buildings in the background, and everyone around is watching, and no one calls the police, just like a fight club.

Just one picture, Strello quickly outlines the face of the city with colors and light, and even the personalities and situations of the two characters. There is no need for lines or music. The picture tells the story, everything is placed there, waiting for the audience to discover carefully. Strello's picture is always implicit."

This comment comes from the famous Roger Ebert. After "killing with a knife", Roger once again wrote a professional comment and published it on his personal website. Just this detail can be felt by Roger's admiration and love for Reims.

In the comments, Roger played according to common sense and analyzed the image style of "City of Sin", but the analysis angle was different, elevating the use of Lance's works to the theoretical level, which made people feel the uniqueness of Lance's works for the first time. In addition to "the day after day", Lance's other three works can clearly feel this, which also allows laymen to truly see for the first time: why Lance won the Oscar nomination for Best Director for two consecutive years!

However, Roger's evaluation of "City of Sin" is more than that.

"The City of Sin, adapted from the original comic of the same name, uses a circular structure to tell four chapters, the customers are God, difficult farewells, cruel killings, and yellow bastards. However, this work is different from the shocking and disruptive linear structure of the pubic novel. The four stories are not split into pieces and rearranged and combined, but are similar to four parallel stories, from individual to whole, and from whole to individual, presenting the entire appearance of this city of Sin.

The beginning of a killing that cannot be traced back to the roots was opened, and the flower of sin slowly bloomed and ended with a killing that was black and black, declaring the complete chaos of the city of sin and extinguishing the last glimmer of hope.

Strello interprets the sin city that Frank Miller once portrayed by a unique perspective, but gives it a deeper and heavier practical significance: when justice no longer becomes a means to resist evil, when people begin to get used to disregarding crime, and when self-interest begins to override everything, the sin city is our future.

This is an interesting topic because we always believe that the lawless chaos in the city of sin cannot become a reality, just as we firmly believe that the end of the world will not come, just as we refused to believe in the heliocentric theory in 1592.

Looking at the simply splitting the city of sin, Strello shows us a chaotic and dark world, with government agencies being useless, and has only become a defensive means to avoid further spread of violence, religious beliefs have turned into darkness, and turned the sharp blade of faith into an excuse to seek selfish interests. The heroes of justice have been unable to take care of themselves, and their bloody hands have forgotten the so-called upholding of justice and have become a medium that only uses violence to defeat violence.

The so-called justice, morality and law no longer exist. There is only evil, the more evil, the most evil distinction, and no one is innocent. In the four chapters of the movie, it seems that there is a role representing justice, but they all end up extinguishing hope.

The killer in the first chapter acts on behalf of the heavens, but kills the dirty police and the innocent girl in the second chapter, but the dirty police are forced to commit suicide. The innocent girl is brutal and bloody. Quasimodo in the third chapter, after his hands are covered in blood, he is sent to the electric chair by the law. The former criminal in the fourth chapter, turns into a gang, wipes out the police, and builds a system by himself.

Since this movie has just been released and most readers probably haven't seen it yet, I don't plan to spoil it too deeply. But I'll tell you that the hopes in the four stories have been slapped out, escaped into darkness, and turned into evil. This is a completely desperate movie, like the black and white color of the movie.

City of Sin is a seemingly colorful but purely profound movie. It is structured on a real and terrifying metaphor. After experiencing a visual feast, it has been unable to calm down for a long time.

The topic returns to what exactly does the City of Sin map in the metaphor of reality? So it returns to the title of this comment: The Crime Trilogy.

Let us know that the City of God in Lancelot Strello tells a reality: Not far from our lives, there is a City of God, where sin and darkness are rampant, and that world is real, and not far away, perhaps just at the corner of the street. But we choose to ignore, ignore, be indifferent, let go, or even indulge the breeding of sin, as if we are encircled in that area and let them die on their own, and the problem can be solved.

The little overlords, red-haired, and handsome Ned in the story are all like this. They struggle at the bottom of their survival, looking for a way out, but they are repeatedly disappointed, so they finally fall into the whirlpool of killing each other and all perish. The only hope is that A Pao escaped, he came to work in the newspaper and became a photographer, trying to let the outside world hear his call.

So, has the society heard the call of Ah Pao? He killed someone with a knife and gave the answer: No, everyone is busy with their own life and even unable to take care of themselves. How could they have time to deal with others? At least this is how we convince ourselves.

In addition, the work that is still being released in theaters, using a knife to kill people is one step closer, and has raised a thought-provoking topic, Rashomon. Everyone finds excuses for their actions, so that crime is no longer a crime, just like the war launched by George Bush, as if standing under the banner of justice, all actions can be rationalized and legalized.

Vincent in the story takes the killing for granted, just a means of survival, but Max does not agree with it, so he fights. So did he succeed in the end? Max and Vincent die together, but Anne, who represents justice, can escape from birth. As for Anne's future, the movie does not give an answer until the release of Sin City.

The indifference and indulgence of society have transformed the city of God in another world into the city of sin we are living in step by step. This is not a simple commercial film, nor is it an alarmist prophecy, nor is it an unrealistic artistic creation, because in real life, we have witnessed all this.

Since 1955, there have been cases of priests sexually assaulting minors in Catholicism in the United States, and not just two cases, but there are as many as eighty-seven cases in the Boston area alone. What’s more terrifying is that the bishop has always been informed. He not only used the power of the church to suppress the news and conceal the truth through private reconciliation by lawyers without legal procedures, but also continued to hire priests who made mistakes and switched them to different dioces to continue to expand the harm.

The most creepy thing is that this is not the first time that it has been revealed. It has been in court, we have ignored the large-scale cases that have been involved in more than a dozen victims, we have ignored them.

This is the city of God, and this is even more a city of sin.

During the interview session after the Sin City premiere, I asked Lance a question: How do you call social indifference manifested? Why is this not a special behavior of a single individual, but a universal behavior?

Lance answered this way: After the first murder accident occurred in the first murder accident, Max asked Vincent why he killed someone. Vincent's answer was, have you heard of Rwanda?" To be continued.

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Chapter completed!