Review for "Road to Perdition"

     "Road to Perdition" is one of most classic revenge movie I've watched. Of course, we can not use the word "Revenge" entirely to frame the theme of this film. Files with eternal value should be multiple topics, the unknown format,intense mood to take the audience into the film.
 　  The title of the film gives a violent and bloody feeling, but in the performance, the director used music, lights, shadows,different perspective and highlights to show strength of the violence. In terms of cinematography with its amazing composition, subtle lighting and various techniques.  The film starts with the high key scene of a minimalistic composition. The subject is backlit and placed in center.Then, a nice play of S curve and lines from the hill and bike track, also minimalism. A rule of thirds composition with camera tracking the bike so it stays still in the frame while the pedestrians or cars are motion blurred and moving out of the frame.Back to central composition with the kid facing us and pedestrians moving away this time. The cars on the scene below are also placed so the picture is more or less symmetric.

This is a long shot with the rule of thirds composition, Dutch angle, partial frame and high contrast. We know moving object carries more weight, so the kid on bike moving towards left somehow balances large mass of the plant on the right.
        The entire film uses dark scenes. most of the film's characters dressed in black. Director Sam Mendes did not use 3 point lighting technique.The most exciting moment is when Sullivan was facing the killer and listened to him that took pictures of victims after killing them. One light source maybe was the sunset coming from the window and hit on Sullivan's right side of face, the other blue light seems coming from the store to fill the left side of his face. So we can see sweating motion very slowly. The first time that light can be used so beautiful, the camera work can turn the frozen time into a painting. In the film, the director of photography used glass to show different perspective.  One scene is glass on the door of Sullivan's house. Mike was preparing in front of mirror and suddenly he the reflection of the person who killed his mother and brother in the mirror. Another is glass on bathroom door. Sullivan opened the door, walked in, two shots, then Sullivan came out, the door mirror was slowly closing and reflected a man lays in the bathtub with blood all over place.