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| Crime
management: Bullock and Gosling in Murder by Numbers. |
Killer
Style
By
Shawn Stone
Murder
by Numbers
Directed
by Barbet Schroeder
Spring is here, and with it comes the latest film about brutal,
senseless violence. In Murder by Numbers, teen killers
match wits with a dogged homicide detective, carefully committing
a random murder and laying out clues to confuse and misdirect
the ensuing investigation.
The killers are a precocious pair. Justin (Michael Pitt androgynous
again, as in Hedwig and the Angry Inch) is too smart,
Richard (Ryan Gosling) is too charming, and both are too rich
and unsupervised for their own good. They know they’re better
than everyone else, and can do what they like with impunity.
The 20th century may be dead, but the Nietzchean gay teen
killer stereotype, born of 1920’s thrill killers Leopold and
Loeb and revisited repeatedly on stage and screen, refuses
to die. One would think Columbine would have provided more
contemporary insights into homicidal adolescents, but then
the killers wouldn’t have been able to drive expensive cars,
eat caviar, or sip absinthe while musing over Man and Superman.
The cop, Cassie Mayweather (Sandra Bullock), is smart, tough,
and deeply troubled. No one likes her, not even, it seems,
herself. (Cassie’s idea of fun is drinking Scotch alone or
watching Matlock.)While the rest of the police, including
partner Sam Kennedy (Ben Chaplin), stupidly follow the trail
of false evidence planted by the real killers, she zeros in
on the kids. Cocky, blonde Richard really gets under her skin;
she sees his wealth and good looks as a mask of evil even
before there is any evidence. Of course, as things develop,
this relates to a tragedy in her past; in fact, it’s the reason
Cassie became a cop. There’s nothing groundbreaking in any
of this, but the familiar is nicely revisited, with good acting
and some nifty cinematic tricks.
To its credit, the film is tonally consistent. The color scheme
is dominated by blues and grays, and the mood is pure malevolence.
Director Barbet Schroeder indulges his taste for baroque violence
with startling images of the killers going about their messy
work in homemade hazmat suits (an absurdity better passed
over by those who prefer their crime films realistic), and,
memorably, a crazed, screaming baboon with bright red blood
dripping from its mouth. More to the point, however, Schroeder
doesn’t allow the charismatic teen killers to become cuddly.
They charm only their peers and parents, earning no more sympathy
from the audience than their brutal crime allows.
The spell is never broken by intrusions of sentimentality,
either, not even by the lead. Cassie is a total wreck, and
though undoubtedly sympathetic, still difficult and not very
likable. Credit Sandra Bullock, who also co-produced, with
resisting the movie star’s prerogative to be loved. Like the
character in the film, she would rather be respected.
The
Headmistress Is Acting Funny
Crush
Directed
by John McKay
This year’s early entry to the ever growing list of English
films about unlikely romances is Crush, by first-time
writer-director John McKay. Let’s hope the next wannabe to
the Four Weddings and a Funeral prototype is more accomplished.
For starters, there’s the triteness of three good friends,
all of whom are very different from each other except for
the fact that they’re fortysomething and lonely. Kate (Andie
MacDowell) is the dreamy headmistress of a picturesque prep
school (the film takes place in the English Cotswolds); Janine
(Imelda Staunton) is the chief constable fond of ’60s psychobabble;
and Molly (Anna Chancellor) is the caustic, sophisticated
town general practitioner.. Their weekly get-togethers involve
too much drinking and not enough slapping sense into one another,
as they take turns recounting their miserable sexual existences.
The winner gets what looks like a case of truly awful English
caramels.
Then love—in the unlikely form of 25-year-old Jed (Kenny Doughty)—appears
for Kate, and while she’s swept away in a series of graveyard
copulations, Janine and Molly think fast to devise a plan
to save their friend from sheer madness and near-certain heartbreak.
At this point, the movie delves into the somewhat serious,
culminating in you-can-see-it-a-mile-away tragedy, and the
jarring shift of tone from whimsical and romantic to melodramatic
and tragic just doesn’t work. Maybe it’s McKay’s newness to
the field, but I also think that these kind of suds don’t
play the same without Barbara Stanwyck or Irene Dunne to carry
the day.
Aside from the unevenness in tone, the movie is rife with
incongruities and plain old bad writing. Who exactly is Jed,
other than a sexy part-time organist and occasional mechanic
or chauffeur (the movie shows him with cars a lot, but we
don’t really know what relationship he has to them)? Without
knowing anything about him, we can’t be sure whether or not
Janine and Molly are right to interfere. What exactly does
an English headmistress do—surely, the job isn’t merely frantic
gropings in the coat closet and occasional board meetings,
as it appears is the case with Kate. Why would the seemingly
sensible Janine go along with Molly’s crueler jokes? What
is it about English writers of late that makes them want to
pack as many weddings as possible into their films? Crush
is well-meaning, but such movies, as with likeminded acquaintances,
are often the hardest to stomach.
—Laura
Leon
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