Wes Block isn't really seedy in this movie. He ambles about and speaks tiredly, as if he were on blue bombers, but seediness implies defeat, and Clint Eastwood isn't actor enough to project such a state, anymore than John Wayne was (with the exception of his final scene in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"). The plot is full of holes but, if you can suspend disbelief effectively enough, it still works. Just don't think about it too hard.
And it suffers too from one cliché after another. How often have we seen the good guy and the bad guy mano a mano, and one of them has a pistol, and the second guy grabs the first guy's wrist and manages to keep the pistol from being pointed in his direction, and then the gun is knocked out of the first guy's hand and there's an insert of it skittering across the floor, to be followed after a few more tumbles by a shot the Western version of which Vladimir Nabokov referred to as "the pinned hand groping for the Bowie knife." It's night time and Block is searching his house for a hidden murderer, creeping through dark rooms, boards creaking underfoot, danger around every corner -- and he does not TURN ON THE LIGHTS. He carefully opens a closet door and a dog jumps out. That sort of thing.
Pauline Kael nailed the film for hiding the antagonist's face until the very end, since his appearance is unimportant anyway, but she was wrong to do so. The whole theme of the movie is the venerable one of the Doppelganger. The Doppelganger is somebody a lot like us, but representing only a part of our personalities, one we'd rather not acknowledge. In Poe's "William Wilson", the Doppelganger represented Wilson's conscience, or superego if you like. In Stevenson's "Doctor Jeykll and Mr. Hyde," the latter was clearly an id figure. In this film the villain is definitely in the second category. And Kael was mistaken to criticize Block's final confrontation with his Doppelganger on the railroad tracks because when Block rips off the killer's ski mask, it reveals a demonic face that is distorted as it howls with an infrahuman rage, and Block draws back, his own face twisted with the shock of recognition. It's the most powerful moment in the film.
There are other good moments as well, particularly Block in a paroxysm of anger, trashing his bedroom and cursing sulfurously after his daughter has been assaulted. Eastwood let himself go for that scene, suggesting the kettle boiling within the sleepwalker's body. The movie is mostly dark, even in the most unlikely settings, such as hospital rooms. It's filled with close ups of scary faces, many of them on plastic Mardi Gras floats. The director probably meant the warehouse scene to be no more than that, the sort of thing that might frighten children, but one wonders if he realized exactly how surreal that journey through the darkness and frozen turmoil of our subconscious really seemed on screen.
It's spooky, true, but maybe not for the reasons Eastwood intended. He gets good support from the other players here, and makes effective use of locations, except that on occasion they come to take on a tourist's eye view of the Crescent City. The Mardi Gras scene looks shot on the cheap. When was the last time a movie was set in a New Orleans that didn't have a Mardi Gras going on? "Panic in the Streets"?
And it suffers too from one cliché after another. How often have we seen the good guy and the bad guy mano a mano, and one of them has a pistol, and the second guy grabs the first guy's wrist and manages to keep the pistol from being pointed in his direction, and then the gun is knocked out of the first guy's hand and there's an insert of it skittering across the floor, to be followed after a few more tumbles by a shot the Western version of which Vladimir Nabokov referred to as "the pinned hand groping for the Bowie knife." It's night time and Block is searching his house for a hidden murderer, creeping through dark rooms, boards creaking underfoot, danger around every corner -- and he does not TURN ON THE LIGHTS. He carefully opens a closet door and a dog jumps out. That sort of thing.
Pauline Kael nailed the film for hiding the antagonist's face until the very end, since his appearance is unimportant anyway, but she was wrong to do so. The whole theme of the movie is the venerable one of the Doppelganger. The Doppelganger is somebody a lot like us, but representing only a part of our personalities, one we'd rather not acknowledge. In Poe's "William Wilson", the Doppelganger represented Wilson's conscience, or superego if you like. In Stevenson's "Doctor Jeykll and Mr. Hyde," the latter was clearly an id figure. In this film the villain is definitely in the second category. And Kael was mistaken to criticize Block's final confrontation with his Doppelganger on the railroad tracks because when Block rips off the killer's ski mask, it reveals a demonic face that is distorted as it howls with an infrahuman rage, and Block draws back, his own face twisted with the shock of recognition. It's the most powerful moment in the film.
There are other good moments as well, particularly Block in a paroxysm of anger, trashing his bedroom and cursing sulfurously after his daughter has been assaulted. Eastwood let himself go for that scene, suggesting the kettle boiling within the sleepwalker's body. The movie is mostly dark, even in the most unlikely settings, such as hospital rooms. It's filled with close ups of scary faces, many of them on plastic Mardi Gras floats. The director probably meant the warehouse scene to be no more than that, the sort of thing that might frighten children, but one wonders if he realized exactly how surreal that journey through the darkness and frozen turmoil of our subconscious really seemed on screen.
It's spooky, true, but maybe not for the reasons Eastwood intended. He gets good support from the other players here, and makes effective use of locations, except that on occasion they come to take on a tourist's eye view of the Crescent City. The Mardi Gras scene looks shot on the cheap. When was the last time a movie was set in a New Orleans that didn't have a Mardi Gras going on? "Panic in the Streets"?