Pretentious Pseudo-Noir Schlock

Rating: 1/10 (26 July 2004)

Quotations from Hemingway, "philosophy" about "the dark side of human nature," more yellowed lampshades than I could count, and a totally uninteresting and witless take on the genre. The relentless obviousness and unsubtly of Fincher's homages to film noir were almost insulting.
Oh, as was an offensive scene where Gwyneth Paltrow's character winsomely demands to know Morgan Freeman's character's first name so that she can address him by it, although *he,* an older African American man and if I remember correctly her husband's superior, hasn't offered it. (Isn't perky over familiarity one of the seven deadlies?)
Rent _Chinatown_ and see what a filmmaker can do who knows we're familiar with the genre and builds a devastatingly moving and complex plot around the very fact that his main character thinks he's in a film noir while we see something different going on.