One of Dario Argento's weaker affairs, this is a competent but sterile giallo!
Argento is a legend in movie cinema. He's been called "the itallian hitchcock", and usually has a very visual style of directing. He's know for lavish colors and "artistic" murder set pieces. The giallo movie itself came from yellow paperback murder mysteries. They were usually identified by graphic depictions of violence, horrific if you will. This is the tie of the giallo to horror movies, the fact that usually the deaths are quite horrific to behold. Unfortunately, aside from a few scenes of carnage here, this just does not live up to what I expect from Argento. The story goes something like this...
A killer is masquerading as a taxi driver to disfigure and murder beautiful women. He targets mainly foreigners, and after subduing them in his cab, he takes them back to his "lair", where he proceeds to disfigure them. All of this sounds much more horrific than it actually is, and we are shown only quick glimpses of the mayhem. Adrien Brody plays a New York Detective (Enzo Avolfi) who is trying to figure out who is doing the murders. He is brought onto the case when Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner) has her model sister Celline (Elsa Pataky), not show up at her hotel after making a call from a cab and being abruptly cut off. And that's how the movie goes, we see Enzo and Linda go from place to place trying to track down the killer...and we get to see some of his handiwork on his victims as he holds them captive.
One of the oddest things, and something that is far removed from general Argento fare, is the fact that we are shown the killer early on. Since a Giallo, is a "murder mystery", well...the mystery portion of the movie is gone. Then all we are left with it a race against time to save Celline from being the killers next victim. It's all very paint by numbers too...I mean it's just a standard detective story with a few horrific scenes here and there. It's not scary, it's definitely not funny (well I guess a case can be made for Emmanuelle Seigner's acting ability; she never changes facial expressions). We are given a dark story behind how Brody came to be a detective and we see a little bit of the old Argento in the murder scene (that we see 3 or 4 times for some reason). But honestly, that's about it. It's all about tracking down the killer.
Ok, so I have to talk about the directing here, since Argento is such a prolific director. We do get some of Argento's style. He loves to put the camera on the far driver's side so we are kind of hanging off the car as it moves...this is done with Brody's car and the killer's taxi. Also, the flashback sequences to Brody's past are very dreamy, with the camera tilting left and right very slowly and a slight haze over the picture. The murders themselves are quite tame for Argento. Even if the prosthetics of his old films looked really cheesy, the method of murder was always, for the most part, inventive. Here, the only thing that is inventive is where the killer likes to inject his victims to make them sleep. I have to admit that seeing a needle go into one of the victim's tongue's made me wince. Also the blood still looks like paint to me...in all of Argento's films it looks this way...there's the "artistic" murder reference I decribed earlier. Oh and there is an opera scene, a girl running in the rain...but sadly no Goblin score to heighten the effect. Geez, I remember the music in Suspira by itself creeping me out so much I looked in all my closets before going to bed. None of that is here.
Brody's acting is adequate, but he doesn't have much to work with. Aside from the typical, "tortured youth" background, there is just nothing to make Enzo compelling. And as I have said before, Emmanuelle Siegner might as well have slept through this role. She's all pouty lips and uninspired acting..bleh. The supporting cast is small, but Inpector Mori (Robert Miano) does a pretty good job with the scenes he is given. Other than that, it's basically bland. The killer himself comes across as something like the hunchback of Notre Dame and Igor crossed. He mostly babbles in caveman style language...that is eye rolling at times. And his reasoning behind doing all of this is really not made clear. Ok, so he was picked on...the young child they have playing him is not exactly ugly...so I don't get it. Eh...
Sadly, this is about as subpar as Argento gets, and aside from The Card Player, probably his worst film.
5.5 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment