Spinning Man

"Spinning Man" is a very intelligent film that draws interesting parallels between a philosophy teacher's search for truth and that of a detective. The performances, particularly by Pierce and Bronson, are excellent. The plot is satisfyingly complex with an ever-tightening noose of circumstantial evidence, but seems a bit contrived and ultimately disappointing with a bit of a deus ex machina ending and a bit of misdirection in the denouement. Production values are adequate, with several parallels involving rodent traps, dependencies and posters for missing pets, although some of the parallels seem a bit spot-on. The picture is gloomy with weather suggesting an impending storm, reflecting the mood of the characters.

Mystery/thrillers can sometimes put themselves in a bind. They create a 'did he/didn't he' scenario and base their movie around it, but the problem with that is if the answer is one of the options (usually "he didn't") then you don't have a story worthy of a movie, and thus the answer is simple to work out. 'Spinning Man' finds itself in this predicament and takes a unique route to try and escape it. Did it work for me? Not really.

You leave the film with a little bit of a "what was the point?" mentality. The film being quite well made actually covers this up partially, but it's still there lurking at the back of your mind. The film is at its strongest when it is creating psychological parallels with the story that is going on. It's easy to tell the film was based off a book, because it is very well crafted in that sense. The acting from the main three - Guy Pearce, Pierce Brosnan and Minnie Driver - is also very strong and helps carry what could otherwise have been some very clunky dialogue in places.

The film shares a lot of similarities with 'Memento' (and no not just because Pearce is again in the lead role) yet it too often feels like an episode of 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'. The pacing is a little lazy in spots which creates this feeling. This is far from must-watch material, but there is still enough here to make for a perfectly passable film.

I loved to see Brosnan as an American homicide detective. The man has been becoming more and more of a genuine actor lately. Magnificently paired with Guy Pearce this time, providing the correct kind and dose of contrast. And maybe for the first time ever, I can state that Minnie Driver feels "right" in her role.

Though similar stories have been covered zillions of times, in the past decades mostly by TV shows like CSI, the focus is on something else here: The difference between reality and the perception of it. A mid-aged man teaching philosophy, one who raises genuine questions on his actual culpabilitiy, functions very well as the central character, more so than you might expect.

A couple of visual tricks helped the film grow on me as well. One was the shot in which we saw the pole to one side of which the poster for the (fake) bunny search was just stapled, whereas on the other side the suspect saw the poster for the missing girl. The other was how the dialogue between the husband and wife was shown, reflecting from two mirrors standing side by side, the couple talking to each other physically whereas the visual trick functioned to reveal they were rather speaking into oblivion in solitude, with their reflections looking the opposite ways. I wonder if this was a homage to a way older scene from the history of cinema, something by Tarkovski maybe, or if the filmmakers came up with the idea on their own.

There was almost nothing "wrong" with the movie. The scenes functioned, tension and mystery built up well enough till the final act. And then...

Well, the film ended in a way that you could expect. That's it.

As a viewer, I felt deprived of a potentially awesome version of that very same finale, which could have been created simply by re-editing certain scenes. Ending such a story with questions hanging in the air is not awkward at all, but there was either some laziness, or some confusion on what emotions to extract from the audiance.

With Pierce of previous "memento" problems in the cast, this could well have become as captivating as Seven. Maybe a false lead was needed to provide some distraction from the main issue.

Wasted opportunity but still worth a watch.

I enjoyed the movie. In my opinion the writing was really good, and they tried to make it suspenseful but it wasn't very, in my opinion.

Guy Pearce plays a college Philosophy professor who just so happens to own the same looking car as the last person seen before a young woman went missing. Or was it him? Pierce Brosnan is going to figure it out, as he's playing the homicide detective. Along the way, Guy's wife is trying to figure out if her husband could have really had anything to do with this.

I don't have really anything bad to say about it, but it wasn't the best movie that Pearce or Pierce have ever been in, though they do act well together. I'd love to see them do another film together.

This movie is a slow burner, it REALLY gave me sort of a "Memento" vibe while watching it. They probably could have made it better though, there was plenty of room for improvement. But like I said, I enjoyed it. Decent flick to pass a couple hours.

A good thriller is often referred to as a cat-and-mouse affair. Here there are literally multiple mice plaguing the home of a respectable Philosophy of Linguistic Professor, at precisely the same time as he is the mouse in the hunt for a female student's presumed murderer. Geddit? Don't worry: if you miss it the first time, you'll get it when it comes up again later, as it does again and again.

Pierce Brosnan plays (well) out of his usual range and assumes the puzzled gravitas of the cool-headed cop with a drinking past. Minnie Driver is ok as the Prof's doubting, suspicious wife, but she's not given much to do apart from doubt and be suspicious. Guy Pearce is de ent as aforementioned Prof, but his early arrogant posing gets a bit tedious as the story progresses. (His name, by the way, is Evan Birch, which in a movie that mixes its metaphors and symbols like a drunk in a cocktail lounge, must surely be meant to suggest both Evenness, if that's a word, and, well, that's he straight and upright as a birch.)

Alexandra Shipp, as the young female student the Prof is most recently entangled with, owns the screen at every appearance, and shows the kind of potential that makes everyone else look like they're simply passing the time while waiting for her undeniable star quality to be recognised.

Too much of the time, though, all this feels like something from 1988 rather than 2018 (the heavy-handed symbolism, the clichéd tortured genius who comes across to everyone around him as an arrogant monster, etc etc). As a fast ride through desire and guilt, fear and self-loathing, it has something going for it and might even have worked if it relied less on off-the-peg movie clichés and, instead, looked deeper into the central character's motivations.

The first half, at least, is more than watchable and quite engaging in its own way. The ending, as many other viewers have said here, is simply bad. Even/Evan awful. Between the two, there are intriguing glimpses of the better movie this might have been but isn't, not least because the young women in it all remain beautiful temptresses and not one is ever realised as a fully formed character in her own right.

That's a mistake. And a real pity. As every philosophy student knows, we are made, or revealed, in our interactions with others.