| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 05/19/2014 : 11:40:46
Well, it seems to be dividing the critics - and I must admit I'm not on the "love it" side.
The story's called Two Faces of January in order to evoke the bi-directional vision of the two-faced god Janus. If it were on a restaurant menu it might be called Two Flavors of Deceit. Which could be tasty - but I lost my appetite!
First of all, stylish though it may be, it's so damn novel-y. Far too much is reportage ... he said, she did, we went, etc Then, when we glimpse deceit, we're not in any way either surprised, taken in, or interested.
Patricia Highsmith's source was published almost ten years after her sensational The Talented Mr Ripley. A tangled triangle of characters forms the basis for both, and even though January follows a different path, Ripley still keep intruding. While it may work in a novel to keep changing narrative focus, first-time director Hossein Amini isn't confident enough to make it work in the film.
The result is cold storytelling.
Tom Ripley, odious though he is, has a certain charm, a cobra-like fascination for both his victims and us the audience. You're sort of on his side even if you hate yourself for it.
But neither Oscar Isaac's Rydal nor Viggo Mortenson's Chester [both wonderful performances, by the way] are quite deceitful enough to fool us, nor clever enough to dazzle us. As for Kristen Dunst's Colette, the character is only present as a foil - we see snippets of relationships [as we might viewing a moment of strangers on a passing train], but never anything to give us a point of identification. That makes for a case of who cares?
My take on movie music is that it should punctuate with subtlety. Too many scenes here became a war between sound and action. I suspect there was a tinge of the clich� riffs that filled Chandler's and Hammett's mean streets, but I just wanted to turn down the volume - or better yet - turn it right off!
Most of all, though, - and this is something so criminal it should be an arrestable offence - is Amini's handling of tension. As he's also the screenwriter, it's his job to inject it whether or not he found it in the book.
Instead, he's administered a kind of dummy injection without a needle.
My one-word film review = meh!
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