Crimes of the Past

The ambitious espionage thriller blends well with an intense family drama and weaves together a good story. Thomas Sparrow (David Rasche) plays a CIA agent in Berlin during the Cold War era who was involved in transferring of money. The assignment goes wrong... And now Sparrow is retired and has come back to Seattle in hopes of reuniting with his daughter Josephine (Elisabeth Rohm), whom he hasn't seen for years. The film is engrossing, and very well acted!Eric Roberts delivers a wonderful performance as Josephine's shrink, who also happens to be a former CIA employee. I saw the Hollywood Reporter Review which mentioned that the more crucial accomplishment to the film was the insight into all of the characters and that it was a densely layered mosaic, and I agreed.

This was an excellent film, which took me by surprise. The story and direction managed to masterfully blend the suspense of the spy genre film, while building wonderful characters and leaving you with something under your skin. The performances were outstanding! David Rasche, Eric Roberts and Elisabeth Rohm were brilliant! It was visually beautiful and the evocative. I was reminded in ways of Coppola's The Conversation, with Gene Hackman. Elisabeth Rohm was amazing. She created such a complex and rich character and should be awarded for it. I look forward to seeing the film again. It was excellent from start to finish.

While i am tempted to give this movie a 1/10 to offset the top reviews it is more like a 3/10. It lacks in everything, reasonable story, empty acting and horrible editing. While the story might have made it a poor mediocre film, the video editing was just dismal. After 10 minutes of watch vague and shaky shots i was exhausted. In some poor attempt to make it more "realistic" every shot is shaky, like a handy-cam. That would have been a bad idea even if the acting was solid. But the acting was also poor. Even the main character is completely 2D and everybody else is barely present. It seems they only had money for a couple of takes. All in all its awful just awful.

This was a solid film overall. I enjoyed the setting of Seattle and the photography and story and the actors. I am always interested in what Eric Roberts does and an actor and find him to be electric on screen. The actor that plays the spy character is fantastic. I've seen him in another other films and always like his acting. I liked the actress as well that plays his daughter and found the lawyer character very unique and different. I got caught up in this film in a gradual way. Based on the description I sensed that I should not plan or expect the movie to be something of action but more of a character film and for that I liked the movie. Another thumbs up about the movie was the casting of the girl that plays the her daughter. Movies sometimes don't seem to cast the best children that feel real and this girl was very, very solid.

I loved David Rasche in Burn After Reading and I'm also a big fan of Rohm from Law & Order – Not to mention Eric Roberts… All of the actors were really excellent in the movie! It's both a thriller and a family drama, which I found to be refreshing. The story follows Tommy Sparrow who is wounded in a CIA operation and his journey to reunite with his daughter Josephine. Rohm did a great job with her role and really created an interesting and complicated character. It's an intelligent film and isn't packed full of action. It does require you to tune in to catch the details, but once you do it really builds well. It's shot very well and is a very good character driven film that blends the genres.