Reviews

Didn't know what to expect from this film and was very pleasantly surprised. Excellent performances, tight plot, suspenseful direction, and it kept me guessing until the unsettling and unexpected final revelation. If this were a Hollywood film it would be ruined by making the main character either totally evil or (suprise!) good at heart in the end. Congrats to the filmmakers here for creating a very flawed yet very human protagonist. Not a monster, just one screwed up human being. Thanks for trusting your audience enough to put a human face on the ultimate evil. Such a character is actually far more frightening and sinister that a stereotypically cardboard, black-hearted villain.

The poster who called this "Plotless and pointless" literally took the words I would have used in my subject line. The only thing I'd add is "passionless." For a film made by a real life married couple and featuring lots of graphic sex scenes this movie manages to make what should be a sultry situation into one beyond ice cold. Dafoe and Colagrande look bored during the sex scenes, and the viewer might as well take a Valium and have done with it. Also, please, the women in the audience have seen WAY too many used tampons in their time, and any guy who is turned on by seeing Willem Dafoe pull a bloody tampon out of his wife's vagina really needs to get therapy.

I think the key to the film (if there is one) is the restaurant scene where a waiter explains to the perpetually sleepy-eyed Dafoe what a "deconstructed jambalaya" is. (All the ingredients of the dish still separate rather than simmered together.) This movie is a "deconstructed thriller". All the elements are there: spooky, isolated house, dead spouse,creepy violins on the score, weirdo caretaker who comes and goes as he pleases, auto accident deaths and near deaths, characters with a secret past. Basically every thriller cliché you can think of, but NOTHING comes together. Everything just sits there and never meshes into a coherent plot or even an artsy mood piece. At the restaurant, Dafoe passes on the "deconstructed jambalaya". Prospective renters of this mess would do well to leave this deconstructed thriller on the video store shelf.

Hard to believe an actor of Pacino's stature could end up starring in this mess! The "plot" barely makes sense, and the roster of suspects makes it obvious right off the bat who the "mystery psycho" will turn out to be. Pacino is a Professor of "Forensic Psychiatry" (a specialty of dubious believability at best) who apparently works at a University with only one finished building where every student takes his class, and they all park in the same garage. Set in rainy Seattle, the biggest mystery here is why it is pouring on Pacino's speeding taxi, but once it rounds a corner an exterior shot shows a sunny day complete with pedestrians apparently staring and pointing at the film crew. Another head scratcher involves Pacino's ever changing hair length, style, and color all during an 88 minute period--guess he made a few stops at Supercuts in the midst of solving his own murder.

Thanks so much to all who commented NEGATIVELY on this clichéd slice of sodden lemon pie! All the glowing reviews were so wrong! "You can't tell where this movie is headed." Yeah, right. Like the second they show Big Bertha the Boom Boom Bear and mention she's a dirty fighter who doesn't care if her cheating "could kill someone" you're not gonna roll your eyes and think--"That will NEVER come up again will it??!!?? Give me a break. This movie has the worst script I've seen in a major film in years--utter sentimental garbage. Totally stereotyped characters. And speaking of stereotypes--how come all the good fighters are white and all the bad ones are black? If they hadn't cast Morgan Freeman they'd be open to some well founded racism allegations. What a complete piece of junk!