Occhi di cristallo

When a young couple and a peeper are killed in the field with sadism, Inspector Amaldi (Luigi Lo Cascio) and his partner Freese (José Ángel Egido) unsuccessfully follow the leads trying to track the criminal. Meanwhile, the college student Giuditta (Lucía Jimenéz) is being stalked and goes to the precinct, where she is attended by Amaldi, and immediately they feel a great attraction for each other. When another woman is murdered, Amaldi and Freese realize that they are chasing a serial killer. Amaldi visits Professor Civita (Eusebio Poncela), trying to find the meaning of three leaves found in the crime scene. Amaldi, who battles with his violent temper, tries to put the clues together and to avoid the next murder of the unknown psychopath.

The story of the dark thriller "Occhi di Cristallo" recalls "Seven", "The Silence of the Lambs", "Saw" and "Resurrection", among many others rip-offs. But the most impressive in this good movie is its style, very similar to Dario Argento. The director Eros Puglielli uses a beautiful and dark cinematography, an excellent camera work, a great soundtrack and achieves great performances of the cast in a reasonable screenplay. Once there are very few characters, it is not difficult to disclose the killer, but his motives are silly. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Olhos Mortais" ("Deadly Eyes")

Most effective, and if this Italian thriller is a little more C.S.I. than Argento, maybe that is no bad thing these days! Storming and very scary start with the momentum not really letting up till about halfway through. For me there is just a little too much soul searching from the otherwise most effective lead, Luigi lo Cascio. This is further complicated by his developing relationship with the also most effective, Bulgarian actress, with the catchy name of, Desislava Tenekedjieva. It is only a slight carp but I felt that at a crucial stage this pause for thought and sex didn't actually help the film. Anyway it is soon back to the very warped and hard edged action and I guess we then begin to wish maybe we had stayed in the bedroom. A very dark and violent film with, if not gushing gore, plenty of gruesome and bloody sights as seemingly random folk get cut about and carried away.

If you thought good giallos were made only in 70s & 80s, watch this. Very stylish & well made movie.

Everything has been said and written about the giallo sub-genre, initiated by Mario Bava at the end of the 60s, polished to near perfection by Dario Argento in the 70s while generating countless attempts at this specific kind of thriller, most of them Italian. It is generally admitted that the last great giallo was Argento's 1987 Opera, with purists discarding it in favour of 1982 Tenebre, as it is bitterly regretted that the Italian master's production since then was a sad slide into the morass of self copycatting, resulting in movies varying from disappointing (Nonhasonno, Il Sindrome di Stendhal) to terrible (Trauma, Giallo), deprived of any of the visual brilliance his earlier work displayed.

Various attempts have been made at revamping the giallo form for contemporary film-goers, most of them ludicrous (German Masks, French Amer, to name but two). To this day, none can even remotely pass for a good giallo, the formula having been preempted by serial killers in the 90s and enshrined in amber ever since. It is therefore a very pleasant surprise to discover Eros Puglieli's movie, who achieves a lot by virtue of a rather good screenplay, solid actors, an interesting choice of music and a visual parti-pris which mostly works in spite of a few weaknesses.

Inspector Amaldi (Luigi Lo Cascio, a little know but intense actor) is a conflicted man and a talented police officer with a background in criminal psychology. He was victim of a gruesome experience in his youth and finds himself confronted to a twisted killer with a keen interest in taxidermy, a niche discipline that he pushes a bit too far for the well-being of a sizable portion of the cast. Meeting a good looking student complaining about a stalker, he has to dig deep into his abilities and emotions to find the killer before he finds her.

All the codes of giallo are respected in an otherwise contemporary feature: a vicious killer with a traumatic past killing his victims with sharp weapons and collecting trophies; coded enigmas announcing the next murder; obvious red herrings; a scary antique doll loaded with sexual implications; an oppressive soundtrack; "improbable when you eliminate the impossible" killer identity. Even the mandatory killer-falling-to his- death is delivered, in a rather satisfying scene. It could be said in fact that the only non-giallo component is a tight screenplay, as the genre is known to be prone to plot holes the size of a wound by ax.

Don't pay too much attention to the shaky initial chase: the rest of the movie is much better filmed, with some inspired moments like a conversation between two characters cleverly filmed through a variety of visual obstacles. Evidently, the murder set pieces are what draws one to a giallo in the first place; without being overly gory they nevertheless reach a decent level of nastiness. Yellow is definitely an Italian colour. Lol

slow, profound, unusual. a "policier" in a different manner, full of nuances, shadows of past and with a central character far from policeman definition.the vulnerability of inspector Amaldi, the delicate love story, the images - bricks of victims, the precise - delicate performance of Luigi Lo Cascio, each are good ingredient for a poetic movie , mixture of roots of past," film noir" and taxidermy. a horror in crime skin. with a good result. sure, it may be a version of Se7ven but in a specific mode. it may be version of a kind of horror , refined, scene for sophisticate mysteries. but it is only a n Italian part of an ambiguous genre , case in which director hopes to create a different product with usual rules. nothing else.