3 Blind Mice

I actually really like Edward Furlong and most of his movies, but to be honest, this one is one of the most awful films I have ever seen.

The camera work is so horrid that it makes you wish that you could hold the camera yourself because everybody could do a better job than that. The basic plot was promising but the script completely ruins it by jumping from one stupid mistake into the next (not only in relation to the simplest computer knowledge, but also to basic police investigation techniques and international law). The dialogues are mostly boring (except for when their lack of logic confuses you). The editing is just as bad, putting in scenes that neither make sense nor are of any actual use to the rest of the film.

All in all, I deeply regret to have wasted 93 minutes of my life on this dreadful film. If you want Edward Furlong and computers, go and watch Brainscan, because that one, despite how surreal it is, has some actual potential to entertain you.

29 July 03

"Three Blind Mice" leaves the viewer shattered, trying to make the picture come out differently. Edward Furlong and especially Emilia Fox might seem perfunctorily cast at first; by the time the film is halfway to its end they seem to have merged with their characters. Trapped between computers, highjacked television channels, and all all-stops-out reality show combining B & E, sex crimes, mutilation, and murder, their characters are caught up in a plot they keep trying to convince themselves they can control, knowing they have almost no chance. Fox, so quietly convincing in "The Pianist," here seems capable of going in any direction, and for that matter three directions at once, whiplashing the viewer from one perspective to another. The drama is under pressure--no actor dominates any other, there are no McGuffins, no cheats, no teases, just a momentum that builds so cruelly you may want to forget the film when it's over. Chances are you will have to see it again.

This film seems to be getting a lot of negative feedback. However, i quite liked it.

My opinion may be different to the average movie viewer because i could follow the technical computer terms easily, and i am quite interested in the subject of computer/internet crime and use.

I bought this DVD from a 'b grade' section at a very cheap price, after reading very little about it here..... so my expectations were very low. i usually don't buy movies, especially if i don't know anything about them.

OK, the movie was a little confusing in some ways, like how the 'bad guys' were connected, and the overall crime being committed, but there was a lot about this which i liked. To begin with, they did not 'dumb down' the computer terms and actually showed a fairly realistic view of a person who's life revolves around internet.

If you have seen the movie 'hackers', you see quite the opposite.

As i said, i would be more interested in this movie than the average person, but i don't think it is too hard to follow. if you think this kind of movie would interest you, i would recommend checking it out.

final score: 7 out of 10

• andrew

In London, the hacker Thomas Cross (Edward Furlong) snoops into many persons life using their web cams. Thomas mainly enjoys watching Cathy (Valérie Decobert) but he has never talked to her. One day, Thomas witnesses a masked man killing Cathy and he calls the police, but he does not know her name or where she lives. Detective Claire Bligh (Emilia Fox), who is an specialist in Internet crimes, comes from Paris to investigate the case and the discloses that Cathy lived in Amsterdam. Further, several women has been murdered in the last years in a similar way that Cathy did. She teams up with Thomas and they discover that the murder are related and are part of snuff movies made for millionaires.

"Three Blind Mice" is a very disappointing movie with confused story and screenplay. The plot is such a mess that it is only possible to understand the storyline. The characters and situations are awfully developed and in the end I did not understand many subplots and the motives of many characters. Edward Furlong is awful and watching this movie is a waste of time and money. To make it worst, the DVD has problems with the audio after chapter 7. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Alan Jones of "Shivers" magazine once called "Fear Dot Com" a "ring for retards". If that is true then "Three Blind Mice" is like "Fear Dot Com" with an IQ. Three Blind Mice is a patient film, and a thinking film. So in that right it seems more Asian than European. While European films are generally less plot with more visuals this film sort of goes in the other direction. It was released by First Look Films, the same people who brought us "Dahmer" (probably the best serial killer biography film made since "Henry"). The director in this film opts for a lot of "My Little Eye" type visuals toward the beginning and the end but they do not overpower the film the way they did in that movie. The plot is something you'll have to think about, which is refreshing for a contemporary European thriller and especially refreshing for the sort of trash that usually goes direct to video. This movie was the one that was supposed to jump start Edward Furlong's career (again) but since it has been released direct to video his film career will really hinge on the next Crow movie he's starring in with David Boreanaz, "The Crow: Wicked Prayer". All together this is one of the few thinking European movies that won't be remade, unlike "Insomnia", "The Vanishing" and "Nightwatch" because it bears too large a resemblance to "Fear Dot Com" and "8MM". But if you're renting it its a nice watch. It isn't the greatest watch but for a direct to video release it's pleasant surprise to see that this much thought was put into it. It's a much better film that "Fear Dot Com", which steals from "Kill Baby Kill", "Ringu" and its American counterpart "The Ring" (the whole nosebleed thing didn't happen in the original Japanese movie), and while the cast and ending aren't quite up to par the same way as "8MM" it's very unpredictable. With how early the first murder occurred caught me quite off guard. This may be what weighs the movie down for a lot of people, (something that really grabs you happens early on and nothing quite as visually or mentally engaging happens for quite a while after). But I was patient and, at least in a intellectual sense, it paid off. I do have a number of problems with the script though. Since we are only really hinted at a relationship between Furlong's character and the Cathy character the murder isn't quite as powerful as it could've been, and in for this reason the trailer which accompanies the feature on the DVD leaves you with a different impression of the story being than the film itself does. Even though the two main characters do touch upon the idea of a relationship between two people existing only physically though means of the internet during a conversation (and therefore not really physically at all) its never really touched upon again in the script. Though by the end of film we get to see the contrast of feeling between the type of people who do the watching (we see what other kinds of people watch these sites, though way of their emails to the Cathy character) and the sort of people being watched (though means of the story having the female lead set up her own voyeur site in order to catch the killer) and the more importantly the difference between the sorts of people who only watch and the sorts of people who actually know the people they're watching. Since neither "Fear Dot Com" or "8MM" really bother to touch upon these sort of relationships this film actually represents a screenwriter touching upon an original idea in the middle of writing his film (another reason this isn't bankable Hollywood material). I'm glad that for once a story about people's relationship with the internet actually has something to say. Fortunately the director's power over the camera doesn't slow down or stop the story from being told. When the time comes he takes a passive role here and just you watch the story develop, though his talent for knowing how to tell the story creatively come in handy toward the end of the story. Another problem American audiences might have with this movie is the ending. But you must realize that the screenwriter deciding to end the story the way he did allowed him to insert another one of these themes into the story, and therein allowing you to understand more about these characters and the screenwriter's point of view of the world.