Inside Job

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.

Psychological thriller about a security guard, Harry, trying to identify who killed his wife and why. The pursuit of justice does of course run closely in parallel with Harry trying to come to terms with the murder of his wife in a shopping mall. His investigations uncover police corruption as well as linking to anti-corruption activities. Harry's obsession with his investigation leave us wondering how much of what he perceives is real and how much is imagined.

The film is also about bereavement, loneliness, fear and obsession, well portrayed by John Turturro as the grieving security guard. An intriguing film that keeps the viewer guessing. However, the story ultimately isn't satisfying and is at times too loose and aimless. Not a brilliant film but a certainly a good film.

Very disappointing. After the amazing "Pusher" i was expecting great things from Nicholas Winding Refn, but this was a huge letdown. It was just very sad to see a guy who started out with such a strong distinctive cinematic voice churn out something so completely unremarkable. Refn sadly seems to lack any sense of personal style, as this film bares absolutely no stylistic similarity to his debut film. It could have been a completely different filmmaker from what i could tell. Sadder still is that this was Hubert Selby Jr.'s last project before his death. Why waste his talents on this empty piece of film-making? To it's credit, it was fairly well made, but it was all atmosphere and style and absolutely no substance whatsoever. This had potential to be a good psychological puzzle in the David Lynch/"Demonlover" mode, but ultimately failed on almost every level. It somehow managed to be both maddeningly straight-forward and simplistic, and illogical and unfulfilled at the same time. I have absolutely no problem with incoherence, in fact i would have enjoyed this film considerable more had it been more so, but this just plain didn't make sense and left me confused, but at the same time was just far too simple and unchallenging. Or maybe i just didn't get it at all. I don't know, but either way i found it to be a deeply unsatisfying viewing experience.

"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.

critics and the media are always obsessed with novelty. if it doesn't bring something new to the table, then the hell with it. with this attitude, films like "fear x" fall by the wayside, but i'd like to speak in its favor.

if you're going to copy someone, copy the best. this movie is told using a vocabulary pioneered by other directors, namely david lynch and particularly stanley kubrick. this leads many to dismiss it as unoriginal.

while it may not invent a cinematic language all its own, i think it certainly uses some existing techniques to great effect. the resonant emptiness and dread of the overlook hotel from "the shining" is adeptly echoed here in mall parking lots, empty houses and hotel rooms. lynch's knack for making everyday american trappings foreign and scary is taken for a spin, and even an inexplicable trip/voyage sequence a-la kubrick's "2001" turns up.

fantastic camerawork by kubrick veteran larry smith and amazing sound design by the master of ambient noise, brian eno, make for an unusually polished cinematic experience.

the story line is admittedly a bit weak for all the cinematic devices around it, but with a movie this enjoyable and consistently intriguing, who cares?