A gritty-glossy (and subtly distressed) series of character posters dropped recently for Bart Layton's (The Imposter)'s adaptation of Don Winslow's (The Savages) heist potboiler about literal highway robbery, Crime 101, in anticipation of its February release. Framed in ultra close-up, where you get half of the face, at best, the posters feature a stacked cast of movie stars who regularly moonlight as character actors, including Halle Berry, Nick Nolte, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Barry Keoghan, Chris Hemsworth, and Mark Ruffalo.
The latter is featured here, looking like he just stepped out of a Michael Mann flick -- all five o'clock shadow and film grain. (I am not being abstract or figurative here, I mean Collateral to be exact. Ruffalo had a lovely minor part as an bad ass Italian-American L.A. cop, busting heads with Peter Berg.)
Given the relative minimalism of the teaser poster from last year, this set of character posters goes for a more maximal, cars and clothes and background texture design. Posters that make you feel you can reach out and touch go a long way to pulling in a casual observer. I hope the film itself is as good as these portraits of its Rogue's Gallery.
Given the effect of the images, the design here keeps the chunky serif'd text, consistent to Empire Design's previous posters, but here focusing on one character, the title, and the release date. It eschews the full credit block, only for the writer, the director, and the R rating, which, rest assured, is as likely to pull its target audience into the theatre as much, or more, than the even the top-tier author, and director.