Un crime

While returning home after fixing the lights of a billboard, the worker Vincent Harris (Norman Reedus) passes by a taxi with a damage of about 2 x 45 cm on the door. When Vincent arrives home, he finds his wife murdered on the floor of the living room. He claims that the driver was wearing a red jacket and a ring with a large stone. Three years later, he lives in Brooklyn but is still chasing the killer of his wife. His dysfunctional neighbor Alice Parker (Emmanuelle Béart) has a crush on him, but Vincent is haunted by the ghosts of his past. When Alice meets the cab driver Roger Culkin (Harvey Keitel) out of the blue, she seduces him, damages his taxi and gives a red jacked and a ring to him. Then she forces him to meet Vincent, inventing a culprit to release Vincent from his past and stay with her.

"A Crime" is a weird but original movie, supported by the magnificent Emmanuelle Béart in the role of a fatal woman. The story is unusual and follows the style of a film-noir, and the mysterious character performed by Emmanuelle Béart is one of the most manipulative I have ever seen, using her sexy body to create an illusional relationship with the tough taxi driver Roger Culkin to achieve her ultimate objective. The movie has erotic scenes performed by Emmanuelle Béart and Harvey Keitel and I liked it. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Crime" ("The Crime")

The three protagonists are dull and dreary; Harvey Keitel, a zen/boomerang throwing/aging taxi driver, Emmanuelle, an unemployed petty criminal/drunk( and ravishingly beautiful), who for unknown reasons is madly obsessed with Norman, an average looking depressed unemployed underground greyhound racing addict, each one living in shabby apartments. Then comes the love triangle with unsavory intenions; two characters wanting to murder the third character. At this point you flash back to Reservoir Dogs and hope they all shoot each other. I think the blame is with the director for painting such a gloomy portrait with sorry to say, POS characters. Put this in the hands of better talent it might have had a chance. (And gross more than $400,000. How pathetic.)

"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.

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!

Harvey Keitel has a sterling reputation of finding the weirdest roles possible and this is yet another one. He also has the reputation for always finding roles in which he gets to flash some skin, and again this one is no exception. Keitel plays a brutish cab driver who gets caught up in a plot of seduction and intrigue.

It's a weird story about weird people. Altho made in 2006 it certainly looks like it was made in the 70's like in the time of Taxi Driver. There's some skin in the movie. Dialogue is average so nothing special there. Seems like there could have been more to it I am sure many would find it boring.

6/10.