The Cell Review by Tim Wick
Well, it's Renaissance Festival season around here and that means that I see
about one movie a month if I'm lucky. Last month, it was Space Cowboys and
I
sure wasn't lucky.
This month, I actually managed to get out and see The Cell. In case some of
you haven't seen it yet (or actually care what I thought), here's my review.
I wasn't too sure what to hope for when I went into the theatre. In
seperate
reviews, Harry Knowles
and Moriarty from
aint-it-cool-news blasted this film so hard, I almost just figured I would
have a friend tell me about it. However, Roger Ebert
went so
far
as to call it the best film of the year so far.
Given such vastly disparate opinions, I figured I had to see this film. The
last film that gathered such a mixed bag of praise and venom was Magnolia,
and I loved it. I didn't love The Cell (and the best movie of the year is
still Chicken Run), but I didn't hate it either.
First time director Tarsem takes a stab at the serial killer genre but tries
to twist it a little, with mixed results. Like the absolutely fantastic
Se7en, one of the best (if not the best) films of this genre (yes, I am
including Silence of the Lambs), this film want to take you into the head of
the serial killer. To be different, we actually, Matrixlike, travel into
the
killer's head.
Our guide through this world is Jennifer Lopez, who plays child psychologist
Catherine Deane. We are told that travelling into the mind of a serial
killer is very dangerous. Well if it wasn't, the movie is kind of
pointless,
isn't it? Deane has her own set of fears and neuroses that are certain to
make the trip anything but an easy one.
Her virtual host is Vincent D'Onofrio as the serial killer du jour. His
particular kink is drowning his victims slowly and then making them up to
look like dolls. Conveniently for the plot, he happens to have a latent
virus
in his brain that renders him catatonic right before the FBI can catch him
and discover his latest victim before the proverbial "it's too late".
Vince Vaughn plays an FBI agent trying to save our trapped victim and - in
some ways - Catherine.
The film is pretty. Tarsem got his start on Nine Inch Nails video's and
that
experience makes for some very striking and disturbing visuals in the
virtual
world of the serial killers mind. Some of the work was CGI, but a lot was
done through traditional special effects and it was blended very well.
The ultimate problem is the script. Ebert called it a complex film, but I
thought it was all too simple. In the early going, we have Catherine making
a suggestion that they "reverse" the mechanism, having the crazy people
enter
her mind instead of the other way around. This kind of sloppy forshadowing
is only too transparent. I can think of several other situations where the
screenplay simply doesn't give the audience enough credit.
D'Onofrio's Carl Stargher is a complex character, but we don't really get
enough time to understand why he is who he is. The film thinks that it's
provided you with enough imagery and exposition to explain why he is who he
is, but it provides more questions than answers. In Se7en, we understand
why
the killer does what he does - even as we are revilled by it. Here, we are
left guessing into the credits.
At one point, Lopez is seduced by the fantasy world in D'Onofrio's head. I
couldn't figure out why. Nothing that happened was indicative of a mind
altering moment. The only purpose was to get Vaughn's character into the
"Matrix" so he could get freaked out by the dream world instead.
I do need to say that I really did apprecial D'Onofrio's understated
performance. It is very easy to play a serial killer way over the top.
Stargher is as repulsed by what he is doing as much as anyone, but doesn't
know how to stop himself. That is a tough role to play, but I thought
D'Onofrio did a fine job.
The problem here was that someone had a cool idea, but ultimately had no
idea
how to make it into a cool film. Character development and plot are a big
piece of the puzzle here. Instead of a film that could really use wonderful
imagery to show us the mind of a serial killer, we had a film that showed us
the mind of a music video director who wanted to make a serial killer film.
Three Beakers
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