Fear X - Im Angesicht der Angst

This is film has all the elements of a suspense thriller without anything in between to join them. I found it to be quite effective and genuinely intriguing up until halfway, then it became gradually apparent that there really was no cogent story. We are give the pieces of a puzzle only to find that they never fit together anyway.

Lots of people seem to be reading too much into the story, that's probably what Refn wanted. Personally I think he really couldn't put together a good thriller and this is a total cop out. Don't waste your time trying to make sense of something senseless, there is nothing in there to bring this together and reading anything into it is entirely in your own mind.

"Fear X" is a change of pace and scenery for both Danish director Refn ("Pusher", "Bleeder") and writer Selby Jr. ("Last Exit To Brooklyn", "Requiem For A Dream") who mostly deal with violent urban decay and despair.

A shopping mall security guard, John Turturro, is trying to track down whoever shot his wife in the same mall. A co-worker supplies him with endless surveillance tapes which he watches over and over, while taking photos of blurry 'suspects' of the tapes. Little by little he collects fragments of evidence of the identity of the murderer. But "Fear X" is not a straight forward thriller with a crystal clear conclusion, it's more of a dark unsettling psychological journey of a man in need of healing for his loss.

Snowy Canada is stand-in for Midwestern small town Wisconsin in this independent film (co-produced by Denmark, Britian, and Canada) that has a "Fargo" look to it. The director's two first films was clearly inspired by the works of Scorsese and especially Abel Ferrara, but "Fear X" is less easy to compare to others. There's a conspiracy feel of movies like "Blow Up" and "The Conversation" but some of the surreal images in the end recalls David Lynch and vintage Polanski. The pace is subtle just like John Turturro's awesome lowkey performance which suits the film perfectly because you can totally identify and feel for his character's quest for the truth. Brian Eno's haunting score also fits the movie quite nicely and gives a feeling of genuine dread. Anyone who think all Danish movies are overhyped Dogme experiments shot on video by epileptic camera men are in for a nice surprise. The film is shot in beautiful scope by Kubrick's cinematopgrapher. The always reliable James Remar, whom I loved since "The Warriors", also deserves praise for his small but important role.

"Fear X" received some good reviews at the recent Sundance festival, and will hopefully find a larger audience. Refn still remains the most promising Danish director, in my opinion, because he totally operates outside the Danish trendy mainstream film circles with a genuine love for movies, from classic Italian cinema to hardboiled American crime flicks, which make his vision of filmmaking pretty unique in Denmark and Europe.

Security guard, Harry Caine (Tutorro) lives a life of lonely obsession after his wife's mysterious shooting at the shopping mall where he works. Unsolved by local Wisconsin police, Harry struggles to piece together information salvaged from surveillance video footage. A dream leads him to discover a photo that begins his search for truth in Montana. Like many psychological thrillers it meanders through themes of schizophrenia and police corruption, but doesn't rise to the excellence of the superior 'Spoorloos' by fellow Danish director, George Sluizer. I soon realised that I had no compassion for Caine or held any emotional attachment to either him or his dead wife. I am certainly not condemning Tutorros' acting; indeed the entire cast did a fine job. The plot just had no substance, no story, no soul. I watched narrative suffer through incoherent changes between dreams, visions and reality. No meaning could be made from feeble attempts at lynchian uniqueness. Kubrick collaborative Larry Smith is Fear X's saviour. Through his creations of unnerving environments we wallow in a visual richness without which would leave the film ineffectual. This utterly pretentious film fails to tell us a story worth listening too. Uncompelled I watched, hopeful that Fear X would recover with a remissive ending. The biggest let down of all being we had to fabricate it ourselves.

* * ½ (2½ of 5)

Fear X

Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn, 2003



No fear

Nicolas Winding Refn is easily the most interesting Danish director around today. While his tracklisting before Fear X included only two movies - the gritty, streetwise and perfectly captured debut Pusher (1996) and the more ambitious and pseudo-melancholic Bleeder (1999) - he'd already worked up a name for himself as the enfant terrible of, if not European, then Danish cinema.

Refn, like Tarantino (a major influence) and many other angry young directors from the 90s, grew up a movie nerd, raised on action b-movies, Hong Kong slambang and drawing inspiration from cult movies rather than mainstream (accepted) classics.

Yet he also belongs to the elite here (where Tarantino is still CEO) as he has a keen understanding of pure movie making, storytelling and creating angles and unique approaches in what has turned into some sort of predictable genre by itself.

Notice how in Pusher the downright rotten character of Frank (intoxicatingly portrayed by Kim Bodnia) gradually gains our sympathy in his many struggles as the movie progresses. And how in Bleeder Refn still keeps you glued despite the raw and sudden turn in events (Bodnia in another amazing performance) that might have seemed simply uncalled for and repulsive in the script.

Fear X is Refns $7 million dollar American (filmed in Canada actually) debut starring John Turturro and the always welcome James Remar (remember 48 Hours?).

What exactly went wrong here is hard to pinpoint. See, Refn not only had everything going for him, he enlisted Stanley Kubrick's famed photographer (The Shining) Larry Smith and wrote the story together with Hubert Selby (Last Exit To Brooklyn) and he got Turturro to star.

It opens like magic. Refn might be an obsessive perfectionist but the visual ripe beauty and subdued enigmatic thriller qualities of the first hour are breathtaking in both their simplicity and perfectionism. Turturro too seems completely at home here, actually displaying an honest apprehension I have longed to see him take on since Redford's Quiz Show.

The story is interesting. Security guard Harry Caine works at a shopping mall but is stunned by grief when his wife is viciously shot and murdered in the underground parking lot. Caine then spends all his spare time insanely going through CCTV security tapes, hoping to spot the identity of the killer.

Refn's patient opening and sleepy but crispy audiotative visuals makes everything seem in slow-motion. Fear X promises to be a truly effective thriller by now. Notice how cars seem to roll rather than drive and how the scenes within the mall are un-hectic and almost drugged. We feel comfortable in Refn's sure hands but also sense a layered unease about to be revealed later on.

Already here - with cops and security guards in furry Parker coats, minimal and loopy dialogue and brooding snow-covered suburdan scenes that melt into each other - many will draw parallels to Fargo (1996), but that can really only be deemed a testament to how defining the Coens benchmark still is and not as valid critisism of Fear X.

No, what is troublesome is how Refn goes absolutely nowhere in the last part of movie. Caine's journey leads him to a hotel that in itself will have you screaming for another Coen gem also starring Turturro (Turturro, hotel, get it?) That is, if you're not already bogged down by the shameless nods to The Shining with the suspiciously dark red colors of the hotel furnishing, the tricky lighting and the substitute violent red-liquid scene.

There's more. Refn even spices things up with David Lynch mannerisms and comments. Caine is on a kamikaze downfall by now, but the subplot (I won't reveal it) of why and who murdered his wife is so blatantly poor that when the hotel bell clerk comments to Caine: "We provide all sorts of entertainment here" - we don't feel that Refn just popped in a cheerful thumbs-up to Lynch's Twin Peaks, but is desperately trying to thicken his sullen gravy of a plot.

It's a shame. Fear X ends as a pretentious and self-conscious mess that started out like a long-lost classic and perfect thriller.

Director Nicolas Refn is a natural - a master of sound and image - with an astute feel for vibe and engaging storytelling, but Fear X is pretentious way beyond its title alone, dumb when it should be smart and edgy for all the wrong reasons.

I enjoyed Turturo and Remar and 3/4 of the film was top notch i this genre. As others have said, the ending destroyed the movie by leaving too much to interpretation.

Theory 1 - Harry Caine and his OCD had a psychotic break with reality which was climaxed at the hotel and his meeting with Remar's character in Montana. Problem with this is why have Remar talking with other characters about the unintentional death of Caine's wife because a dirty cop had to be taken out.

Theory 2 - There was a "Code of Silence" conspiracy by law enforcement and everything that was shown to happen(meeting Remar at the hotel, getting shot, going into some rage and blanking out?) and Caine's confession of murdering the cop(Remar) that killed his wife all actually happened but the police covered it up. If so, then where is his bullet wound? How much time had elapsed?

This movie worked like a finely built superhighway that was left unfinished.....