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The killer who didn't kill
The psychiatrist who wasn't a psychiatrist
And the detective who wasn't a detective
Kenneth Branagh tried to make a Hollywood Movie here, right after his amazing success with Henry the Fifth, and it didn't work out as well as it could have. Why did he insist on playing the lead role himself instead of giving it to any good American actor from the Costner, Quaid or Bridges generation? Or is there a lack of English actors who could have played the part? Branagh got lost here between the consummate Englishman Derek Jacobi (excellent as usual) and the consummate American Robin Williams (as usual) .
Some things bothered me in this Movie whiwas highly overrated. It started out as a psychological drama verging on surrealism, but the ending was unnecessarily violent. Besides, if they hadn't told us that the setting was in Los Angeles, how could we have known? Derek Jacobi plays the swindling charlatan in his typical charm, but no one explains how such a crazy and deranged child could become such a charmer. The scene in which the mother explains how she took her son for treatment in England was designed only to explain Jacobi's pure English accent. The section with the hole in the reporter's neck was unnecessary gross, in spite despite the importance of the issue of smoking to the solution of the mystery. The point of the Movie (warning: spoiler!) is that her spirit was reincarnated in him and his spirit was reincarnated in her, and once that becomes clear you, the Movie ia basically over and the rest is redundant.
And the most important question that remains unanswered till the very end – who was the lady and what caused her to lose her memory? And why do screenwriters and directors love to impale their villains on broken glass, sharp pieces of metal, etc? |