Um Crime Passional

Sorry to say, I am not a very astute, in-depth, insightful movie watcher, but I figured out this plot in the first 3 minutes; & I do mean three minutes. The movie went downhill from there with its predictability. Every scene, following those three minutes, unfortunately, just proved my hunch to be more & more correct. The movie actually became painful to watch because of its trite, predictably. I continued to watch out of humorous curiosity to see how correct I was. Humour soon became anger. I wanted to yell at the characters, telling them how ridiculous they were being. "Stop, think, don't fall for it, the way every movie guy does!" But, I knew it was too late to tell them, I was watching a movie so the deed was all ready done & "in the can" as I've heard movie people say. What a shame. That's 90, or so minutes I'll never get back.

I blame Neil LaBute for writing and directing this awful picture which should have been so much better. It probably would've been had an a more talented screenwriter created it. I want to commend the actors, especially Ray Nicholson who gave as good a performance as this limited screenplay allowed. I hope he's not discouraged. It's regrettable that he and the others, including Diane Kruger and Hank Azria, two excellent actors, hitched their professional stars to this terrible project. Hopefully they'll be more selective in what they do going froward.

There is nothing novel about the script. It's far fetched in addition to its numerous other problems. I recommend skipping it, as you'll never retrieve the hour and forty four minutes you'll lose.

Absolutely predictable, not one surprise, or novel idea from start to finish. You could call some of it foreshadowing, I suppose, but that would give the screenwriting far more credit than it deserves. Hard to believe that even one 'named' actor signed up to be part of this movie and the horribly obvious faux-plot that it pretends is worthy of your time, attention and electricity to suffer though. Do yourself a favor, and watch just about anything else you can, and skip this one.

This is probably obvious from the above, but I'd be horribly surprised if this didn't get nominated for multiple razzies. If not, the diner scene, and the "I can sit here all day with my **** down your throat" scene alone should get a writer a good, old-fashioned tarring and feathering.

The movie is well filmed, well played (even if it is not well-written) but makes no sense and has a plot that is weak to say the least.

There are screen cards telling you the time that passes between each scene as in silent movies. I understand the intention : this is not reality but an interpretation of it by the main character. It does not work because these cards are there every two minutes. They become very annoying and cut the fluidity of the story. It gives the impression taht every scene is a sketch independent from the other scenes, thus creating a story that isn't one. You lose interest pretty fast in my opinion.

The story in tiself is pretty basic. I think the directior who also wrote this movie wanted to look at this genre (the erotic thriller) with a cynical eye. But if that was the case, the movie in general takes itself too seriously for it to be a critique piece of this cheap gimmicky genre.

And well the end is a gimmick made to shock us and reveal the absurdity of this kind of movies. But it is a bit forced and cringy.

Maybe I am reading to much in this, but there are not any black actors or extras on-screen. Is the director saying that these thriller-thingys are often all-white. It made me wonder and it is true that these erotic-thrillers that I saw lately (the Affleck one adapted from Highsmith's novel...and others I don't remember the titles) are all-white cast. They are all pretty bad too.

I think it is time to declare these thrillers dead and begin to make thrillers where the story takes central stage instead of the twists. Deceivng the audience is cool and all-that, but not when it impoverishes the plot and takes the audience for a "babbling bumbling band of baboons".

I will give this 4 for the actors and the director's filming but even if it is a critique it is not a well made one.

Follows similar story of 1981's Body Heat.

Could tell the director's decisions were aiming to have some sort of artistic value added but were questionable and fell short of the desired effect - odd transitions, meaningless scenes, forced music, and long scenes with dialogue that felt redundant failing to move the story forward.

Hard to root for or get attached to any of the characters - none of them felt real, all kind of forced stereotypes. Each of the main characters (Diane Kruger and Ray Nicholson) were equally mysterious, but didn't feel like any substance between them, just physical attraction. The dialogue and decisions they made felt more like a Hollywood creation than anything based on reality or logical thinking.

Side characters were pretty good. The boyfriend (Yousef Abu-Taleb) at the end stole the movie for me and felt like the only real character in entire story. Parole officer (Hank Azaria) was good, his intro scene playing the role of a no non-sense tough cop was over the top. The deputy (Fred Weller) was even more over the top, but felt more in-line with the spiteful, I am the law, kinda persona a cop on a power-trip gives off.

Entire time watching, felt like a different take on Body Heat. Want to again mention weird transitions - if the director.(Neil. LaBute) reads this, what are you doing??