KEY POINTS:
Herald Rating: * * *
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling, David Strathairn, Rosamund Pike, Embeth Davidtz, Billy Burke, Cliff Curtis
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Running time: 112 mins
Rating: M, contains violence and offensive language
Screening: Hoyts, SkyCity
Verdict: Slickly plotted murder thriller overcomes its advantages - notably two great performances - to be almost boring.
More entertaining than it has any right to be but finally rather unsatisfying, this slick "perfect crime" murder thriller blends a plotful of surprises, two teaspoons of classy performance and a splash of lustrous design into a concoction that doesn't actually taste of very much.
Hopkins plays Ted Crawford, an ageing and brilliant aeronautical engineer, who discovers his wife (Davidtz) is having an affair and shoots her in her pretty little head.
What looks like an open-and-shut case - he tells the first cop he sees what he's done and even signs a confession - turns to custard when he defends himself and ties the prosecutor up in knots.
That prosecutor is Willy Beachum (Gosling), hotshot deputy DA who is just about to leave for the padded leather pastures of corporate law. Thus an extra layer of pressure is added to the battle of wits that he is fighting (and mostly losing) with the slippery defendant.
Hopkins, whose still-eyed, elegantly vowelled Crawford is a riff on Hannibal Lecter complete with Irish accent and chummy manner - he keeps calling Beachum "old sport" - is plainly having a lot of fun. But because we have no back story on him, he comes across as a curiously bloodless character. We have no sense as to why he is doing what he does - except for the fact that he can.
Gosling, however, heartbreakingly authentic in Half Nelson screening elsewhere right now, is a joy to watch as he gives his deceptively casual and very winning style another impressive outing. Kiwi Cliff Curtis has a decent turn, too, as the lead detective on the case.
But the film as a whole feels forced and implausible. Saddling Beachum with ethical quandaries rather tends to drain the drama from the central story, and the courtroom scenes never allow us to see the reportedly brilliant Beachum at his best; beside the wily, apparently ingenuous villain, he looks like a bit of an oaf.
