Not bad if you like slower mysteries

Rating: 6/10 (7 October 2010)

When I saw all the great reviews and the trailers for this movie I was really expecting something a little more exciting.
This is a mystery movie about a girl who disappears sometime around WWII. Her uncle (old rich guy) hires a reporter to find out what happened to her. He suspects someone in the family offed her.
At the same time another story takes place that eventually merges with the main story. A girl (19? 20?) who had no parents and is taken care of by a guardian works for a company that does "research" for old rich guys or whoever else is willing to pay I guess. The old rich guy in this movie hires her company to check out the reporter to make sure he's on the up and up.
Her guardian dies and is replaced by a man who sexually abuses her. She manages to get back at him, and blackmails him into leaving her alone.
She discovers some facts regarding the girl who disappeared and sends them to the reporter. The reporter finds out who she is and recruits her to help him. Here is gets a little gross as the reporter looks to be in his late 30s or 40s, but they have an affair anyway. I think they just had to throw a little nudity in to keep people interested. IMHO they could have left out the entire sexual abuse thing and had a much better story (or at least just used a few short flashbacks so we could understand why the girl is so hardened).
Early in the picture the old man shows the reporter some pictures made of framed flowers and plants the missing girl used to give him as birthday presents. He shows the reporter an huge collection of these and claims whoever killed her is sending them to rub it in (since she was a favorite relative). At this point the end of the movie was completely ruined for me as I knew right away she must still be alive and sending him these gifts every year. This was such a amateurish mistake. I don't know if it came from the book or the movie, but it sucked.
There was some excitement in the movie as someone tries to kill the reporter, and eventually they find the bad guy, the girl kills him off (justifying all the scenes with the sexual abuse and some flash backs), finds the missing girl (who is an older woman now) and reunites her with the old man.
Too long, and some slow boring parts. I did not watch it with the subtitles so it may have been a little better in the original language. It reminded me of some boring Canadian movies from last decade, but not quite as boring.
I rewatch movies in my 600 strong collection quite often, and even though I bought the blu-ray version of this movie I doubt I will ever take it out, dust it off and watch it again. I liked the actors. The production values were adequate for a movie of this type, so I guess it was just not my cup of tea. Some reviewers seemed to think it was the best movie since they figured out how to pre-slice bread, but I don't see it myself. Each to his own I guess.