Almost Blue

There's a serial killer loose in the Italian city of Bologna, and from the get go, we're introduced to the aftermath of a very brutal killing in the hands of a psycho, with a preference for extremely loud music played through his headphones. I thought the killer here is very much like the one in the 2004 film Taking Lives starring Ethan Hawke and Angelina Jolie, where the murderer lingers and adopts the persona of the person he kills, before moving onto the next victim.

In essence this is your classic cat and mouse thriller that explores the links between the three leads in rookie policewoman Grazia (Lorenza Indovina), the psycho killer played by Rolando Ravello to Aamir-Khan-Ghajini's crazed perfection, and the blind man Simone (Claudio Santamaria), who gets caught up in the entire episode because he wilds his time away at his computer listening in to chatrooms, police scanners and what have yous, like an online busybody oracle. In doing so, he puts himself unwittingly in the line of fire as the killer decides to make him the next target. And so the premise is set, and I felt there's a truck load of potential here to at least live up to average thriller expectations.

There was what I thought a perfect moment set up in allowing the audience's imagination to run wild with one killing - you can hear audible sighs of sorrow when the killer picks his mark, because while the character was nothing more than a supporting one, appearing only to nag, everyone understood instantly the impact it is going to have in the story moving on. The aftermath of that was nothing short of poignant, and that hammered home the notion of how evil is as evil can be.

If there's a major letdown in the exciting build-up, it's how everything gets wrapped up in the end too conveniently and in major anti-climatic fashion. Big clue being the need to adopt the persona, and having everyone turn up at the right place at the right time, with room for some sexy time thrown in as well for good measure, just because it's Gialli. It turned what could have been room for a tight, climatic finale into a joke of convenience probably stemming from a lack of ideas. Great build-up, but terrible finale.

It was a pleasure to watch to Marco Giallini. He is a great actor with the face of a big Italian man. Hope to see him more. Yes, I really liked the cast. The film goes straight ahead. It is just a classic thriller story. And it is a fantastic film. You see lots of interesting camera angles, like I just said, a nice cast and a powerful atmosphere. Why didn't I hear about this director, Alex Infascelli, before? For sure, you gotta like thriller, this is not kind of big philosophy, this is creating a thriller atmosphere and enjoying every minute. Many young directors loose themselves in trying to be something different, but this director has done a good job and that's it. I wished there were more movies with that kind of clear genre dedication.

Worst acting ever, i mean, even worse than the couple Dionisi/Caselli in Argento's NonHoSonno. Even Santamaria who is a good actor is totally unfit with his role. But if you look at it again, even if he is not directing actors at all, Infascelli took his chance on making a movie with a very strong visual impact, and there it is!! The cinematography is neat and hard. Alex should work on his big skills by making a more solid thriller/horror movie, this was just a decent first try. 6 out of ten

It is hard to see how anyone could trash this film on the criteria of craft. It is a very well made film that understands its genre and goes beyond it. In terms of generic revisionism, this film goes beyond the genre by structuring within the plot a woman trying to compete in a man's world: the detective charged with catching the serial killer. Layered onto that is the role of technology in creating a surveillance culture. Carefully plotted so that the viewer will suspect the wrong person for half the film, it creates a complex investigation, not into personal psychology, but into contemporary society: university culture, techno-pop and music culture, cop culture, and patriarchal culture.

Ironically enough, such a sustained examination of these cultural cross-currents do not anchor the film into Italy specifically--something that is exceedingly rare for an Italian film. This plot could have been just as easily set in Kracow, Oxford, Munich, Ann Arbor, or Berkeley.

It is compelling, complex, and well crafted. Tension builds, is dispersed, and builds again, only to have a twist throw it off yet again. Complaining about it generically is not only off-base, but the equivalent to complaining that every western has horses in it.

Almost Blue is a very dark thriller, based upon the homonym book. I usually don't like movies based upon the book but this is great. Very well directed by Infascelli, in my opinion Almost Blue challenges the masterpieces of its kind like "The silence of the lambs". The script it's very smart and in a way very unusual, as a matter of fact the movie is full of original scenes. It's surprising how a quite young director can do things like that. Even the music theme of the movie, a famous version of the song "almost blue" by Elvis Costello, is amazing and fitting with the mood of the movie. Give it a chance because it absolutely worths the price.