Quando il ramo si spezza

It's July 4th Houston. A dismembered hand is washed out from the sewer. Captain Swaggert (Martin Sheen) leads the investigation of seven neatly severed hands with tattooed numbers. Special Investigator Audrey Macleah (Ally Walker) is a profiler from the State Crime Division and brought in to aid the team. The state mental hospital has a mute boy Jordan Thomas (Tara Subkoff) with mysterious lines around his wrists who draws hands on the walls. Macleah suffers from claustrophobia. Jordan writes the name of Jennifer Lynn Eben, twin daughter of Dr. Douglas Eben (Ron Perlman).

It's fascinating that Ally Walker is playing a profiler a couple years before getting her TV role as a profiler. This is a mix bag of interesting characters and unreal over-stylized characteristics. One can't go wrong with Martin Sheen. Ally Walker is pretty good as this driven profiler character. Giving her claustrophobia is a nice touch. The teen in the mental hospital is too much and too cliché. I wish the case is better written for these characters' sake. The scenes in the hospital are too slow and the movie drags in too many places. This movie doesn't have the flashiness and I actually don't mind. Although I wish it is edited better with some semblance of style.

A cheap knockoff of Silence of the Lambs with nowhere near the depravity, horror, or intrigue it hopes to emulate. The movie quickly shifts its focus onto Ally Walker's character, which would be fine if it wasn't at the expense of everyone else. Martin Sheen is relegated to a side note after about 20 minutes and Ron Perlman is only just in the movie. Everyone just seems to be standing around doing nothing while the new hotshot investigator plays mum to a young boy in a mental ward. There's far too much time spent with this boy and this is where the story falls down. Also, the casting of the boy is an unnecessary distraction so easily avoided. The story comes across as ill-thought-out and scatty. Ally walker's character is claustrophobic in sewers big enough to drive a car through, but not in a locked basement or mental wardroom? Why is the boy even locked away like a prisoner? Why has it taken the discovery of several child victim body parts for the police to take proper notice of several missing children? The initial suspect is swiftly disposed of once he can't be used to mislead the audience and the conclusion to the movie borders on the ridiculous. In the end, it feels a long way off from its beginnings.

In low budget thrillers we generally don't expect to find genuine shock and depth of characterization. But this film has both. What is particularly surprising is the level of complexity suggested in Ally Walker's portrayal of the lead character Audrey McLeah. The film's script in and of itself doesn't sufficiently account for the undercurrents of alienation and fear that we glimpse in the Audrey character. However, Ally Walker, in what was a fairly early role in her career, manages to convey pain through restraint. It's remarkable work in a vehicle that doesn't necessarily require it.

The film even has some powerful poetic touches such as the scars on Audrey's back, scars that resonate all the more powerfully because they appear in one scene and then vanish while the viewer continues to wonder about their origins and about the many kinds of scars that are evident in the film. Here once again Ally Walker demonstrates an impressive skill for sensitive understatement.

Turn of the light. Sit alone. Drink a beer. Feel alone !. This movie will bring you down. This one is a thriller.

The end is not so good but in the right atmosphere this movie will not let you slip away from the tense story. "Silence of the lambs" is the best description I can give, though it never reaches this point of excellence.

Up until near the end this film held my attention. There's plenty of suspense. Set in Houston, the story involves a hotshot young investigator named Audrey Macleah (Ally Walker) assigned to assist police Captain Swaggert (Martin Sheen) in a grisly case of severed hands.

The plot plays out in segments corresponding to dates, beginning on July 4th and spans a period of about two weeks. During this time, Macleah interviews a young boy in a mental ward, chases a prospective child killer, and ends up in a spooky old house that contains some spooky surprises. This thriller genre film sports foreboding background sounds and music to enhance the scary visuals.

Unfortunately, the ending collapses into a pile of unresolved issues and an incoherent resolution that left me confused. It's like the scriptwriter knew exactly where he wanted to take the story, but then near the end got his pages all mixed up, or lost, and used pages from another script to complete this one. Baffling.

The casting and performance of Walker is also baffling. She comes across as jittery and abrasive, in marked contrast to Sheen who gives a convincingly realistic performance. But maybe Walker's problem relates more to the Director's style. The film exhibits good production design and color cinematography. Amplified sound effects convey an appropriate immediacy to scenes.

Despite the script's loose ends and poor ending, "When The Bough Breaks" is still worth a one-time watch due to superb suspense through most of the film.