REVIEWED
“You can't change what was... what used to be.” Ed (Gene Davis)
Consumed by pain and emptiness after losing his wife. Harry's a lonely security guard struggling to accept she is no longer with him. He spends all his waking hours obsessively piecing together CCTV footage, building up the circumstances surrounding her death. That will either lead him to the truth, or to madness.
While on a recent stint of British TV movies, I was amused to stumble on Nicolas Winding Refn's feature length version of Miss Marple, which he made for the beeb. Having thought I'd seen his whole output by now, I also noticed I'd not seen this 2003 Canadian thriller.
Fear X runs wild with the notion that like a photograph, crime evidence can be like a mirror, with the observer seeing what they want to see. It features Coen brothers favorite John Turturro in the central role, turning in yet another of his fantastic performances. It's an intelligently structured thriller, with a pretty experimental/surreal approach, at least leading into its vague final quarter. Like every other movie in Refn's filmography, its bound to divide opinion. Sadly, due to its painfully pedestrian pace and bleak tone, I'd suspect many viewers will bail before it ends and rank it low. Personally I enjoyed it, basically because of the way it managed to keep me engrossed without relying on crowd friendly action set pieces or formula genre conventions.
[Personal Reasons For Remembering]
Turturros more paranoid moments, like when he gets increasingly agitated at the frank direct questioning from the noir like Feds (who could possibly be figments of his imagination) and his anxiety with elevators. And we know what Freud would have said about that red hotel room.
Originally taken from Letterboxd
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