Product: Homicide [VHS]
Rating: 5.0
Compare this to Present Day CRIMINAL MINDS
I have been winding down on enjoying the tv show CRIMINAL MINDS because it just doesn't seem to have the dramatic gravitas something like that should. So I remembered this film, which I saw when it first came out, and since it had one of the stars of the current tv show, I thought I'd watch it to compare.Well, what a revelation. First and foremost, what a difference a first rate script, written by master playwright and screenwriter David Mamet, makes to our understanding of a subject like homicide. Second, pair master actors with such a screenplay, like Mantegna, Macey and Rhames, just to name a few, and watch true magic unfold.This work is so complex that you are thinking long after of how many killings actually took place. There are the ones that are clearly homicides in the traditional sense of someone being shot and killed by someone else. Then there are far more interesting killings which occur because of the sheer nature of evil and its crazy cousin, happenstance. Thus, things like a broken gun holster which a cop never gets around to repairing assumes critical importance. Or a meeting at a specified time which one has forgotten about which involved preserving someone's life. Or one's apartness from the pack being honed in on as a weakness by a different pack of predators. Packs of predators and prey roam the streets in Mamet's work and they range from Israeli linked American Jew terrorists to denizens of black ghettos to the cops themselves.I can see why this film is part of the Criterion collection, in short, and why a tv show like CRIMINAL MINDS never will be.