It's not Raymond Chandler's Simple Art of Murder

Rating: 3/10 (12 September 2004)

mild spoilers here regarding this movie and "Strangers on a train" and "Psycho"
It alway bothers me when things in movies get too complicated and unrealistic. Maybe that's not the point if you are doing a "comment on our society" as someone stated here, but to me it matters when you are trying to do a crime mystery / thriller. I didn't get thrilled, so I did not like that movie.
As Chandler wrote it in an essay, if you want to kill somebody, you don't train a snake to sneak into a closed chamber to bite the victim, you don't dress up in a costume (see Edgar Wallace), you don't invite ten people to a remote castle just to kill 'em one by one (Christie). No you simple ambush the victim and kill him in a dark back road or like Hitch did it in "Strangers on a train" on that island or the killing of Arbogast in Psycho (yes I know there was a dress involved).
This movie was clearly made before C.S.I. hit the screen. Heck, this movie was made before they invented witnesses or anything else which would be a challenge to the killer, like being seen when he stalks his victims by a neighbor or something... He just enters the apartments of these people like he owns their places and then kills 'em in the most complicated way just to create the effect. And he gets away every time. He's a genius, he's better than Arsène Lupin, better even than Keyser Soze, better than the Joker, you name it.
Make your comments on society and do a movie like "American History X". Make a thriller - do it Hitchcock-Chandler-style. But is it just me and old Raymond who prefer it that way??
4/10 Macaulay J. Connor