I was impressed when I first saw this. Not only is the story packed with suspense -- a kidnapped woman has been buried with a day's worth of air and it's the cops' job to find out where she is before she suffocates -- but the performances are better than what we've come to expect from yarns about the police. Furthermore, not ONCE is detective Maura Tierney asked to hand over her badge and gun! In fact, Maura Tierney is quite alright. She's a decent actress and she's right for the part of a policewoman so guilt-ridden that she has a secret lover who burns her with cigarettes and otherwise torments her. She's not a glamor puss either and I liked that too. Julia Roberts would have spoiled it, not through any lack of talent but simply because of her refulgent beauty.
Adrian Brody was a big surprise too. He's the character who buried the young woman alive, killed his accomplice for no particular reason, and now sits in the interrogation room being alternately bullied and cosseted by the police and the FBI in order to get him to squeal about the victim's burial place. He has the face of a Dead End Kid and the whining, contemptuous demeanor of a spoiled brat. It's a hoot when the FBI takes over the case, the menacing agent enters the room, surveys the iron-bound Brody, and goes into this detailed spiel about how horrible it is to die from a lethal injection. Brody listens impassively for a few minutes then looks up with a twisted smile and remarks, "What a stupid monologue." It's all so taut that you get caught up in the story, but it doesn't hold up well on a second viewing. First, you can't help noticing that there is a formulaic car chase through the streets of Manhattan and that it's lifted straight out of "The French Connection". The two drivers glare at each other and try to bump each other's car off the street, while angrily yanking at the wheel.
Then you notice that, as a matter of fact, the whole film is modeled on "The Silence of the Lambs." Brody is a proletarian Hannibal Lecter -- smart, savvy, able to scan others for their weaknesses and then exploit them, an escape artist of a high degree. He teases the hell out of the cops, especially Maura Tierney. He promises to give her some hints if she'll tell him how she came by those cigarette burns on her arms.
The problem is that Hannibal Lecter had a genuine reason for probing Jody Foster's psyche. He'd been penned up in solitary for years. And his curiosity was boundless. I mean, you MUST have curiosity as well as brains to endure the grueling routine of medical school, then psych internship, then years of private practice. But Brody's villain has no such motivation. He's as clever as a sewer rat but what does he get out of Maura Tierney's confession? Unlike Jody Foster's Big Reveal about the slaughter of the lambs, Tierney's isn't even particularly interesting. It's written flatly and Tierney doesn't bring it off.
There's another thing that impressed me as slightly off on a second viewing. Maura Tierney commits homicide. She holds a gun on Brody, lying helpless in a pit, and she decides to bury him alive so she starts kicking dirt into the hole. But in the face of Brody's feculent mocking -- "Oh, yeah, bury me, gimme more, MORE!" -- she shoots him in the chest and kills him. That's not acting as an agent of justice. That's revenging yourself on someone for reasons of personal hatred, and it's usually called "murder."
Adrian Brody was a big surprise too. He's the character who buried the young woman alive, killed his accomplice for no particular reason, and now sits in the interrogation room being alternately bullied and cosseted by the police and the FBI in order to get him to squeal about the victim's burial place. He has the face of a Dead End Kid and the whining, contemptuous demeanor of a spoiled brat. It's a hoot when the FBI takes over the case, the menacing agent enters the room, surveys the iron-bound Brody, and goes into this detailed spiel about how horrible it is to die from a lethal injection. Brody listens impassively for a few minutes then looks up with a twisted smile and remarks, "What a stupid monologue." It's all so taut that you get caught up in the story, but it doesn't hold up well on a second viewing. First, you can't help noticing that there is a formulaic car chase through the streets of Manhattan and that it's lifted straight out of "The French Connection". The two drivers glare at each other and try to bump each other's car off the street, while angrily yanking at the wheel.
Then you notice that, as a matter of fact, the whole film is modeled on "The Silence of the Lambs." Brody is a proletarian Hannibal Lecter -- smart, savvy, able to scan others for their weaknesses and then exploit them, an escape artist of a high degree. He teases the hell out of the cops, especially Maura Tierney. He promises to give her some hints if she'll tell him how she came by those cigarette burns on her arms.
The problem is that Hannibal Lecter had a genuine reason for probing Jody Foster's psyche. He'd been penned up in solitary for years. And his curiosity was boundless. I mean, you MUST have curiosity as well as brains to endure the grueling routine of medical school, then psych internship, then years of private practice. But Brody's villain has no such motivation. He's as clever as a sewer rat but what does he get out of Maura Tierney's confession? Unlike Jody Foster's Big Reveal about the slaughter of the lambs, Tierney's isn't even particularly interesting. It's written flatly and Tierney doesn't bring it off.
There's another thing that impressed me as slightly off on a second viewing. Maura Tierney commits homicide. She holds a gun on Brody, lying helpless in a pit, and she decides to bury him alive so she starts kicking dirt into the hole. But in the face of Brody's feculent mocking -- "Oh, yeah, bury me, gimme more, MORE!" -- she shoots him in the chest and kills him. That's not acting as an agent of justice. That's revenging yourself on someone for reasons of personal hatred, and it's usually called "murder."