Reflections

This ambitious project cost a lot of Spanish dollars, and egos I imagine. Spanish cinema is alive and bursting with talent. Spain keeps gracing the world with talented actors and directors. That makes it even more difficult to understand why anybody decided to waste his money and good name on this movie.

It's the story of an experienced interpol inspector on the hunt for a serial killer, on the loose in the northwestern part of the Mediterranean.

It's clear that this was intended as a European take on one of the Fetish themes of American cinema, the serial killer. The centerpiece of the plot is actually a fresh take on the theme and in itself justifies to make the movie. Unfortunately, the execution fails in all domains.

Ambition ruled over skill, so many parts of the movie are clumsily executed. The first big miss is hiring Timothy Hutton. Hutton is unmotivated and frankly comes across as a bit of a prick. And I'm not referring to his role.

The other roles are better cast, although generally the movie could have used some reliable values in some of the smaller roles, notably Hutton's colleagues.

Besides the bad acting, the plump direction, poor attention to detail and the simplistic plot finish the movie off. It's a pity because some of the other main characters are played by excellent actors and with a bit more juice in some key parts this could actually have been a good thriller.

Now it's just a reheated leftover of your run-of-the-mill American thriller.

The movie is easy to watch just for the scenery and individual performances - Timothy Hutton, Miquel Angel Silvestre, Tania Sarrias - but the screenplay does not take advantage of any of the characters' depth. Some twists and interesting new takes on forensics and genetics, but a little too much straight-line progression. The international cast is strong and should have been given more room to interact and participate. For a serial killer movie, some graphic violence is expected but the few moments of it in this movie seem to stand alone and not help the whole. More time with characters and less simply talking over static crime scenes would have helped. Overall, worth watching once. Cheers!

A good serial killer movie with breathless Spanish locations and very gorgeous Spanish women. It is always good to see Timothy Hutton acting. Once he was one of the most gifted actors of his generation. He made some bad choices in his career. But his presence in the screen is positive as usual. The movie is very interesting both because of the plot and the characters. The subject of genetic generation of people is very present and also scary. The serial killer movies usually are very repetitive. This one has several novelties. In my opinion the great problem here is the screenplay that is very obvious in its solutions. If you like a thriller, you can see it.

Tim Hutton was wooden in his acting and seemed to be not very interested in putting life into this tale. Some of the supporting actors/actresses did a good job, but overall I found it all a waste of time. There were no redeeming features by the end, for me. A thriller it most certainly was not.

In 2008's Reflections, Timothy Hutton plays a Europol agent, Tom Brindle, who travels to Barcelona to find a serial killer called Pygmalion.

When DNA from one of the murders is matched in a military database, Brindle thinks he's got his man, named Marco (Miguel Silvestre). But he's in for a surprise when Marco turns out to have been in lockup during the last murder.

Turns out that Marco has a monozygotic twin who is ten years older. Both are the product of in vitro fertilization; the egg was cut in half -- half implanted, half refrozen and not fertilized until ten years later.

Marco agrees to cooperate because it's believed that even though separated, he may share some of the same characteristics, hobbies, etc. as his twin and can be of help tracking him down.

Interesting idea not very well executed by a somewhat boring and slow film that nonetheless has some excellent acting by Timothy Hutton. If anyone ever started out on a high note, it was Hutton. I'm not sure what happened except that he should be where Sean Penn is today.

Beautiful Spanish locations.