Double fun

Rating: 10/10 (31 May 2009)

Hadn't heard of it, few days ago watched the announcement that it was to run yesterday at prime time, expected some nice above-average stuff. Completely wrong! I enjoyed one of the most intelligent crime thrillers I can remember. Containing enough action and truly dangerous scenes, but not trying to sweep boredom away with floods of blood. No, instead tickling both my cognitively operating and my jitter-causing nerves - dancing question marks here, frightful moments there. Lots of either.
The end is ... naah, I wont tell - worthy finishing such a great story.
Fortunately, I'm a night owl, and my fav station of Austrian public-law TV (ORF 1) reruns most of what's shown from 8 to 12 p.m. starting between 0:20 and - in case there's an extra night movie or something else between - about 2:30 a.m. This time, it was (after 8:15 p.m. for the first time) 0:20.
But how can a solved riddle be entertaining, that shortly after having learned what it was all about? Oooh, it can, and how, thanks to Spike Lee and his team. No, I didn't watch a crime thriller of the usual sort (nont only because it wasn't quite usual at the first time) - I watched 118 minutes (hmmm ... and ORF NEVER interrupts movies or TV screenplays with in-between ads!) of intelligent, hilarious sarcasm. The whats were banal and ticked off now, the whys were known, but watching others - quite convincingly astute folks - guessing and being mislead, concentrating on the subtly woven context and the sophisticated, foxed orchestration - and then watching all the play being performed this way of all possible modes only because of a simple ... um, human need made it a second and totally different, almost greater pleasure.
But don't forget it is about crime. And a truly very abysmal one, in this case. What ...? No, I won't ... and who? No! Thou ought to be mislead as well.