Rating: C-
Dir: Hampton Fincher
Star: Owen Wilson, Brian Cox, Janeane Garofolo
An interesting failure, this has Wilson as a serial-killer… but one who is otherwise a very nice bloke, and may be the sanest person in the film. He drifts into town, moves in with the somewhat strange Brian Cox and his wife, gets a job at the Post Office, oh, and poisons a few people. It’s all terribly low-key, and that’s the problem. Should we like Wilson or not? Has he a justification? The film takes no moral stance, and this ambivalence is not compensated for with plot or character development to supply some much-needed impetus.
Odd flashes show potential, such as the hallucinatory federal agents (one of whom is Dwight Yoakam!) that dog our hero’s every steps, but I expected more from one of the Blade Runner scribes. The theatrical trailer (if you missed it at the cinema…so did everyone else – it grossed less than half a million) reveals nothing of the film, instead showing a couple debating the movie – I can see the point, I just doubt the significance of a film with no answers, nor much in the way of interesting questions.