A Sloppy Middle

Rating: 4/10 (24 January 2008)

The movie is below average, despite a very interesting first 20 minutes and a nicely done turn at the end. A very flabby middle, something that we all must fear as we age, detracts from its power. I found myself fast-forwarding frequently. The occasional comparisons to Hitchcock are far-fetched: one thing Hitch really knew how to do was pace a movie. Of course, some people may like the literary allusions, for example, the main character reads Dostoevsky and then commits a cold-calculated murder. The death of his girl-friend's neighbor is even more heinous than that of the pawn-broker in Crime and Punishment, whose lesson is apparently lost on our hero.