Decent but becomes progressively less interesting

Rating: 6/10 (23 March 2010)

I basically enjoyed this film, as reflected in my rating but it is certainly flawed.
My preconception before watching the film, based upon the images of the main character, was that this was quite possibly a film that gets a lot of it's traction from the beauty of it's female star - dressed up in that Gothic she's-a-bit-disturbed kind of Matrix chic.
I was pleasantly surprised that the eponymous character does actually have some depth, and didn't have me groaning at tank grrrl clichés too often.
The film then heads off into what seem to me kind of interesting waters and is gearing up to be intelligent, well-paced, suspenseful and unconventional.
The problems arise when the film starts tying the mysteries up. The kind of devices that you would dismiss in a TV drama as being clichés, start surfacing with alarming regularity... It becomes more difficult to suspend your credibility... Things take on an increasingly BBC 2 Poirot kind of feel.
Then when you feel that the story has been told, the film continues for another unnecessary 20 minutes or so, most of that time spent spelling things out in a slightly patronising way..
The final scene seems well and truly out of place. People may say that "if you read the book it all makes sense"... Maybe, but this isn't the book, and the film needs to stand on it's own two feet.
So I would say this is half a good film, and half a late night TV murder mystery. Worth seeing but doesn't live up to the hype in my opinion.