The Chameleon

When the fiction is more unsatisfying than the real life, then you're in a big trouble. "The Chameleon" is a weak film because it fails to generate interest in a real life story that has all the elements that could make into a great project. The director made questions he couldn't answer and we couldn't figure out possible reasons for all what happened in the events surrounding a young French (Marc-André Grondin) who claims to be the disappeared son of a poor American family, "returning" to his home after being kidnapped and taken to Europe. The problem is that it's obvious that some members of the family know that this French accented guy can't be Nicky, but they continue with this game until an FBI agent (Famke Janssen) get suspicious about this sudden reappearance.

Its cheap insistence in creating a mystery bigger than the one existing just doesn't work, with the skeletons in the family's closet with people who knew about the kid's real fate, like his older brother (Nick Stahl). And we are easily bothered by the lack of choices, lack of ways for the story to move in a proper manner. A movie like this can't dwell in the psychology involving the main character, therefore we'll never understand the reasoning behind the boy's staying with people who don't care about him. Why the hell he'd trade his erroneous life in France by shooting in the dark with a strange and careless American family, or why he didn't run away from this family he adopted, a bunch of people who wouldn't provide for him with anything? He's not getting much by staying there, no indicative that he's winning something.

The cast tries a little bit harder than what the script can offer to them make something worthy of our attention. Grondin is a fine actor as evidenced in "C.R.A.Z.Y." but here there's only glimpses of that actor, his duality of angelical innocence with some darker traits is relatively good; Janssen was pretty decent and the more her character progress the more we like her, same goes with Emile De Ravin and Brian Geraghty, doing their best; Ellen Barkin was distractive while trying to be exceptional as the mother.

As a drama, it's not as compelling as the plot sounds and could be; as a thriller is just dull and worthless. Bits of decent acting aren't enough to make it tolerable or watchable. 4/10

I enjoyed it. The acting was solid. The story kept me intrigued. The actual case was very interesting.

"The Chameleon" is roughly based on the case of the disappearance of Nicholas Barclay, and the impostor Frederic Bourdin.

The movie stays reasonably close to the facts, though there are some mayor things changed that IMO was totally unnecessary. At the same time, more could have been done with other things. I am on purpose gonna keep this all pretty vague; as I do not want to spoil anything. If you want to know about the real case, google on it. It is a very interesting thing to do.

I would definitely have liked to have seen more background about Frederic. The case of Nicholas wasn't the first time he imposed as a missing child, neither was it the last time. As if the whole story about Nicholas wasn't bizarre enough, it gets more and more bizarre if you read up on Bourdin. He truly deserves the name Chameleon; it is incredible how good this guy is at languages and in blending in. I do understand that the movie's focus was on only one of his crimes, but I think a bit more history would have made it all even more absurd. Now, you almost feel at least a bit pity for Bourdin, but that should not happen. After all, the guy was/is a very disturbed man who didn't give a *beep* about the feelings of his victims.

The overall acting was not very good. Famke Janssen made the best of it and steals the scenes when she comes in, but I was unfortunately pretty unconvinced by the lead character. The way the story unfolds was just not good enough to convince, and the characters way too shallow. Many things are there in potential, but somehow it just doesn't work. It could have been an 'edge of your seat' thriller or drama, but it simply isn't. Throughout the whole story, it just lacks something. An other reviewer used the word 'dull', and I think that's quite a good description.

All in all; an intriguing case made to a less intriguing movie.

(Ps: An interesting little fact; Bourdin himself worked as a creative consultant for this movie. )

I decided not to mark this review for possible spoilers, since this movie is about a true story and therefore most people who are interested in seeing it will already know how it ends. Besides, several previous reviews tell more than I will about the end, and they got through without spoiler warnings.

First off, it's ridiculous to praise Ellen Barkin's acting just because she's practically unrecognizable: that's called makeup, not acting. Maybe she should be commended for allowing herself to look so awful, but she never was much in the looks department either. The best I can say is that she doesn't ruin this movie as she has some others. Her one-note performance certainly is unusual, but unusual doesn't necessarily mean great.

Second, the problem with movies based on true stories is that if the story isn't interesting the movie usually isn't interesting either. At first I wondered why I had never heard of any of these people before, under any names, and now I know why: there's nothing interesting about them - not the screwed-up, depressed family and not the neurotic, narcissistic bozo who duped them.

Famke Janssen adds a little bit of interest just because she's a charismatic person, but that plus Barkin's mousy, greasy, depressed, anorexic chain-smoking junkie are not enough to sustain a very boring story about very boring people.

We can never be sure about dramatised true stories because tricks are played on our memories even as we try to retell with accuracy. This story of a character who is unlikely to be who he claims to be from the start is as much about doubts as it is about rebuilding hopes. From the opening shots of a body hunt through to the final frames this film attempts to tackle the driving forces of all the characters who make up the plot by showing up flaws and how all of us are sometimes drawn to papering over cracks in our thoughts.

The film is quite clever in raising doubt in our minds because every player seems flawed from Fortin/Randall (Grondin), through Kimberly (Barkin), to Johnson (Janssen) as an FBI agent who seems to have no doubts. Perhaps a clumsy unevenness in the screenplay sometimes makes following the story a little less taut than it should be, but I could not fault the quality of the acting.

Even a family torn apart by an undisclosed tragedy seem very adept at keeping things as they are when redemption is a possibility but the actual interaction between them is not well rehearsed in this script. Too much focus is perhaps played on the mother's relationship with her "son" when there was perhaps a lot of mileage elsewhere.

I would guess many people would want a more commercial ending to a film like this and that has probably detracted from it popularity since it does stick to events as they happened but for me the real let down, having such a great cast, was a failure to grasp the real guts of the story and perhaps reveal a little more of what really may have happened.

Seven out of ten for acting from a fine cast.