There are a few things about this poster that I like. It shows that this is an ensemble piece without filling the whole image with the actors. It conveys that this is a crime related story through the silhouette of the gun. And the combination of the sky and the butterfly vaguely points to the more philosophical and transcendental aspirations of the movie. It’s not stunning or groundbreaking, but overall it is a nice effort that makes a movie with a hard to explain storyline (check the IMDb synopsis to see what I mean) seem unique and interesting.

I found it amusing to compare this poster to the previous poster for The Air I Breath, which you can see below. The old poster had a more traditional design, showing the various actors, each one in their own stripe. It does mix things enough to make it striking tough, especially through the use of stripes of seemly randomly varied sizes, creating an effect that is quiet nice to look at. But the poster doesn’t give us almost any information about the type and tone of the movie. Now, it’s possible that the new poster is a bit misleading, but it gives a much clearer picture of what the film might be about.

Just as an aside, this is the second movie poster featuring a butterfly prominently released recently. The other one was the one below, for Johnnie To’s Linger. I wonder if there is some especial significance to the butterfly that I don’t know about?

(Via the official site)