Calculs meurtriers

It's a swell thriller: a reasonably sophisticated plot, with some neat twists and turns, good camera work, and a kind of satisfactory ending. But just as with the murder story in question, the flaws become apparent at closer examination.

Most important, the characters are not sufficiently presented and explained. The deadly duet shows a very close relation, but not what keeps it so close. It would be easy enough to understand, if they were lovers. Then their quarrel over a girl also makes sense. Since they are not - as far as the movie shows us - their relation remains a mystery.

The same, to a lesser extent, is true about the detective duet. Bullock is not really able to convince with her tough exterior to hide inner wounds, although that should be easy for an actor of her experience, and her male colleague gets no room in the film to show us why he stands her, after what she puts him through the very first days they work together.

Although it's mainly a thriller, I guess this movie would have needed some additional efforts on the drama of it, the emotional processes included in it. Maybe it's all too logical - like numbers.

Richard Haywood (Ryan Gosling) is a wealthy and popular high school kid who befriends nerdy introvert Justin Pendleton (Michael Pitt). They plan out murders adding false forensics to baffle the police. They kill a woman to set up Richard's drug dealer janitor Ray Feathers (Chris Penn). Police detective Cassie Mayweather (Sandra Bullock) and her new partner Sam Kennedy (Ben Chaplin) investigate. They have a romantic relationship but it's not working out. She's the only one who suspects Richard and Justin, but nobody believes her. They then stage the janitor's suicide, and everybody wants to close the case. Justin is infatuated with fellow student Lisa Mills (Agnes Bruckner), but Richard sleeps with her. This and the fact that Cassie is closing in cause a rift in the partnership.

Director Barbet Schroeder isn't able to instill the proper amount of tension. There are just a few too many side stories. He needs to concentrate on the three leads. The romantic entangle with Ben Chaplin's character is a distraction. It just makes her look weak. I think she could be damaged, but not necessarily weak. Ryan Gosling puts in a good creepy performance. Michael Pitt is likewise creepy but in a different way. Ben Chaplin's character is the most normal and the most expendable. The movie generally could use more excitement or scary thrills.

All the elements are there: Two privileged teens with a latent homosexual relationship commit murder for the thrill of it, and to see if they can outsmart the law. That's L&L, as told in "Compulsion", "Rope", "Swoon" and who knows what else. Add in an angst-ridden investigator (could still be "Rope"), make her a small-town detective with a sordid past that she's trying to escape, and throw in her green partner, with whom she has an uneasy, sometimes sexual relationship, and give their relationship some heavy-handed subtext as well. Any cliches jumping out at you yet? All it needs is for the boys to have neglectful parents and for the detectives to have a commander who wants them off the case and, oh, wait, we've got that, too!

People tell me I'm too critical of today's movies. I say filmgoers aren't critical enough. I still love movies, even some Hollywood output, but I really hate it when I can watch a movie and, without even thinking much about it, recite the "high concept" pitch that the writers or producers or whoever made to the studio exec. This is the tenth movie I've seen in 2002 that's been that easy, and the message it sends is that no one in Hollywood is even bother to THINK anymore, much less be creative. And Barbet Schroeder, God bless him, was at one time a genuinely creative director, turning "Reversal of Fortune" from a bland rehash of a story, to which everyone knew the ending, that had flooded the media a few years prior, into a compelling character study by making it just that. "Murder by Numbers", on the other hand, is a by-the-numbers character study with even its subtext having been co-opted from countless films noirs and 60s and 70s psychological drama/mysteries like "Peeping Tom" and "Klute".

Even Sandy as a cop was much more convincing as her typecast "lovable klutz makes good" character in "Miss Congeniality". She still shows promise as a dramatic actress, but she hasn't realized it yet. The teens are appropriately intense, but despite all the claims the film makes, they're really not that bright, and experienced homicide cops would definitely be smarter than they are here. In this way, the film even manages to co-opt from 80s and 90s teen farces.

Basically, there's nothing new here. And if the celluloid flophouses want four times as much as they did 20 years ago for me to sit my ass in their chairs, they better be prepared to offer more than a rehash of the same stuff I watched back then.

Cassie Mayweather (Sandra Bullock) is a homicide detective with a disturbing past, she and her partner Sam Kennedy (Ben Chaplin) are called in to investigate the murder of a young woman found abandoned in a ditch. When everything seems to point at the killer, Cassie's gut tells her that things are not quite as they appear, and the real killers find that they can't hide as easily as they first thought.

Murder by numbers does have some good intrigue and suspense in the plot, and yes it does try very hard to do something a fresh and different, but in the end it just seems pretty run of the mill.

6/10 It entertains and it does have a good cast, but its just not quite sharp enough on the details.

I definitely liked this movie, despite several flaws. The premise is fairly original (although Hitchcock's "Rope" inmediately comes to mind), the pace is fine, and the acting is overall great, with a 22-year old Ryan Gosling standing out in his multi-layered portrayal of the self-assured, manipulative, spoilt rich kid Richard. And in my opinion Sandra Bullock did a pretty convincing job (while watching her is by the way always a treat). I even liked the cliché shoot-out ending, it gave this otherwise low-on-action movie an exciting finale.

What did annoy me however, was the way Bullock's character detective Cassie Mayweather was written. Why this elaborate traumatic background?! It did not serve any purpose for the central story of the movie (the ordeal in her past being totally different from the crime that she now had to investigate) but did take lots of screentime. I guess it had to explain her cranky behavior, and maybe her apparent casual attitude to sex. But she was also pictured as a brilliant professional detective. So why this totally inappropriate sexual harrassment of her newbie partner? Or the innuendos of a sensual attraction towards her major crime-suspect?

It's a strange convention in so many crime-movies, that detectives on duty have to have some troublesome past or an addiction or a conflicting bad divorce or whatever, I always yawn when yet another one of these traumatized police-officers comes along. Either make it essential to the story, or leave it, I would say.

Anyway, as an interesting psychological portrayal of two young wannabe killers, and as an extended well-acted CSI episode, it made for an entertaining but slightly overlong two hours.