Nboth pulpy sufficient for the midnight film crowd, nor stylish sufficient for the arthouse, this alleged thriller a few younger lady referred to as Alex (Aida Folch), who travels to an idyllic Greek island the place she meets mysterious restaurant proprietor Max (Matt Dillon), who is clearly repressing some kind of darkish previous, appears like a missed alternative. Spanish director Fernando Trueba (Belle Époque, Chico & Rita), working from an iffy script he co-wrote with Rylend Grant, will get a lot of the elements proper – unique location, handsome leads, a couple of completely different narrative reveals up its sleeve – however flubs the execution, leaving his forged floundering (in a single case actually, in a pretend drowning scene).
You possibly can see why the actors signed on, although. Dillon’s position is the kind of factor Humphrey Bogart used to take action nicely in movies comparable to In a Lonely Place: surly, standoffish and but one way or the other nonetheless engaging sufficient that you could see why somebody may pursue him regardless of being festooned with extra pink flags than a golf course. There are a few particulars within the script that ought to have sounded the alarm. When his much-telegraphed darkish previous begins to be revealed and it emerges that amongst many extra important secrets and techniques Max was a jazz musician, it will assist if his instrument of selection was one thing aside from the clarinet. Possibly there’s a strategy to reduce to Dillon mournfully tootling within the Mediterranean moonlight that doesn’t register as humorous, but when so, this movie didn’t discover it.
It’s equally troublesome for Folch to flee with dignity totally intact when she’s caught with a personality who appears so clueless: initially to the truth that Max appears fully bored with her, then, after she’s virtually wrestled him into mattress, to the enormous blaring klaxons asserting that digging into his previous may not be such a good suggestion. Issues would have been improved from the viewers’s perspective, nevertheless, if stated digging had occurred a bit sooner; the movie takes its candy time to get to the place we sense it’s going, after which shortly runs out of steam when it does. It’s a disgrace, as a result of cinema might use extra Patricia Highsmith homages; this simply doesn’t occur to be a very profitable one.
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