Phlogiston

Well, this wasn’t on my list of movies to watch, but it jumped out at me when I went to rent something in the “popcorn” genre this evening. A revenge film with noirish undertones, it concerns a case of mistaken identity, two warring crime bosses, a steely hitman, and a convoluted plot that ends up being a kind of North by Northwest in reverse. The critics pretty much hated it but I thought it was fun. It’s not a masterpiece, but it was an entertaining and stylish romp, with plenty of smarts if little depth. I read some of the critics responses after watching it by following the “External Reviews” link on IMDB. Some of the complaints left me scratching my head a little. So it turns out that some of the flashbacks ealier in the film are not actually reliable—in fact they are positively deceitful. Well that’s also true of The Usual Suspects, and if that’s a bad movie then I’m Alfred Hitchcock. The film does indeed revel in its cleverness, but it’s not as if it is taking itself so seriously that it’s trying to pass that off as depth. And yes, the actors do often look like they have their tongues stuck firmly in their cheeks in some scenes. Guess what? That’s because the film is poking a little fun at itself, the genre, and asking us to smile along with it. Lastly, the accusation that it has a comic book vibe in places is one of the more irksome complaints. Why do film critics hate comics so much? (For reference, just read almost any review of Sin City.)

The cast is impressive: Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu (why oh why don’t I have neighbours like her?), Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, and Stanley Tucci. The bottom line is this: this certainly isn’t a great film, but in my opinion it is nowhere near as bad as it was made out to be.