A Crime

A boring mish-mash of crap! We had taped it and it was indicated to be a four star movie so we watched it. How does one get revenge on an unknown someone who has to be nuts to give it more than one star? The French female lead has lips that made you think that if you had to leave her for a while that all you had to do was stick her to the wall with them and she would be there when you returned.

I kept hoping that Harvey's boomerang would come back and hit him in the head and put us all out of the misery of this whatever-it-was.

We know someone who says he is a "screen writer" but has never yet sold anything after years and years of trying. When we see a piece of stuff like this, we turn to each other and say, "Dan could have written that!"

Vincent (Norman Reedus) is still suffering the loss of his wife killed three years ago by some psychopath taxi driver. He can't move with his life so his neighbor (Emmanuelle Béart) who has a crush on him tries to help him by trying to find this killer. Easy? Maybe. So she picks a random taxi driver (Harvey Keitel) and starts to get involved with this strange guy and she's gonna invent that this guy is really the killer of Vincent's wife. And then...

The story behind the movie "A Crime" is one of those intriguing stories where the next movement, the next step is always awaited. There are many surprises, not in that clichéd sense of plot twists, but just in the way that you can't see the obvious, it doesn't exist here. A quiet and slow paced story where the development of the characters and their actions is more important than to really know if they're gonna find the killer or what's gonna happen with Roger the taxi driver. But this is not a perfect screenplay, there's few things wrong with it (the beginning was way too fast, in one moment Vincent see his wife dead and then the movie leaps three years later; and his first moments with his neighbor are quite strange, not well explained).

But besides that the movie floats very well and leaves the viewer wanting more of it. "A Crime" runs about 100 minutes but I think that it could be more longer specially in terms of characters development (mostly Vincent), showing the previous life of the main characters and things like that because these characters are presented and we're feel like "Can we like these characters? What's their reason behind their actions"? It misses much.

The performances are good, most notably Harvey Keitel (How come this guy gets incredible roles where he has to perform erotic scenes at the age of 60? Things that even younger actors don't do frequently and I'm even comparing him with his young co-star Reedus who only has one scene with Béart and it's not even close of Keitel's seductive scenes with Béart). Béart was quite convincible in some parts as the desperate woman who wants to be with Vincent but instead she got trapped and got romantically and sexually involved with the taxi driver. I really liked Norman Reedus mysterious performance here but I wished he could have more scenes and a better character development. Most of his lines are whispered so I advise you to turn up the volume or you're probably miss what he's saying.

A surprising, effective and great film to watch. 9/10

Some people might have two problems with the film: 1. It's rather old fashioned (which is a good thing in my opinion, I don't like the regular hyped mainstream trash). The plot is the kind of story that could come from a novel of Patricia Highsmith, and the look of the film is more like it's from the late 70's or early 80's. 2. The pretty complex story with a lot of strange (and maybe) almost unbelievable coincidences. And you don't get a simple positive character for identification. Exact the same way many french thrillers from the good old times were working (especially those of Clouzot). Though sometimes these films seem a bit too over-constructed (and I must admit I had this problem when I first saw Clouzot's "Les Diaboliques", 1955). But when you accept this (and life itself sometimes surprises us with strange coincidences too), you will see an excellent, very emotional thriller with great performances. You'll never know what happens next!

a film, scenario and atypical director ! it will stay as a classic ! Manuel Pradal film an unknown New York and actors as Emmanuelle Béart is so different and natural as she have to be. Keitel is one of the New Yorker's indispensable actor that Manuel Pradal use as a "maestro"You can't miss this movie wrote by Pradal and Benaquista in the mood of Ginostra as a great scenario, a great story. there some Ferrara inspirations, and definitely Manuel Pradal is an author, not only a director, interested and inspired by stories, in love with actors and giving the right place to them and to the special locations... In this case New York is an actor as Keitel and Beart and will stay like in the Scorcese's Mean street and taxi driver...

"A Crime"

A crime that they actually made this into a movie that had virtually no plot, made no sense and had no ending. Made sense in the beginning made no sense in the end. Harvey Kartel's body is in great shape, for an old man. And I like Harvey, usually. Takes place in New York City in the worst areas possible. It's dark and uninteresting. Music score is so dull, as dull as the movie.

Ok... now I'm just filling space to make up the required number of characters to post a review of this sadly pointless and boring movie. Sorry, you've wasted your time reading this but worse, you may have even watched it.

That is truly a crime.