Giallo

Plot synopsis:
Turin, Italy: French flight attendant Linda and Italian-American detective Enzo Avolfi team up to find Linda's younger sister Celine. Celine, a model, has been abducted by a serial killer. Known only as "Yellow" ("Giallo" in Italian) he kidnaps beautiful foreign women in his unlicensed taxi cab. After drugging them, the killer proceeds to mutilate and finally murder them. He photographs his deeds so that the photos may grant him personal sexual gratification.
Enzo receives a phone call from a fellow officer, who finds the body of an Asian woman outside a church near a fountain. They find out she's still alive, and starts to speak in Japanese. Enzo and Linda start to look for a translator, who tells them that the girl was praying Buddha and then repeated "yellow". They visit the morgue, where Linda realizes that the killer's face could be yellow, and the coroner tells Enzo that yellow skin is symptom of liver disease, so the killer might be in the waiting list for a new liver.
They go to hospital and find Giallo but he escapes. Enzo finds out his name is Flavio Volpe and gets his address. Giallo starts to torture Celine by cutting one of her fingers when starts to bad-mouth him. Enzo breaks into Giallo's apartment, but finds it empty and full of torture devices.
Enzo tells Linda why he became a policeman: long ago, Enzo, who was 10, witnessed his mother being murdered by a local butcher, whom she owed money to. 5 years later, Enzo kills the butcher in his own shop, while Inspector Mori knew why he did it. Mori took him in as if he were his own son. Enzo had kept the knife he used to kill the butcher as a reminder of how he became a cop. Enzo also tells Linda that Giallo might be a pattern killer who hates beautiful women, due to his deformity.
Over the course of the film, Enzo and Linda find more victims and clues as to who the killer is, and why he tortures them. An origin story shows that Giallo's mother was a prostitute that gave her son up for adoption at a church, where orphaned kids started to bully him. Celine tries to escape from Giallo, but gets captured. Just when he was about to strangle her, Celine tells him she's rich and will reward him with money.
Giallo breaks into Linda's apartment and demands a ransom for the safe return of Celine. The film ends with Enzo and Giallo having a shootout in a hotel. Giallo tries to escape, but falls from a skylight to the floor of the lobby, killing him instantly. The police search his apartment for Celine, but cannot find her. They also try finding her at an abandoned gas factory where Giallo brings his victims.
Linda starts to blame Enzo for killing her sister, as well as calling him selfish and inhumane, because Giallo was going to tell her the location of where her sister is. Enzo tries to convince Linda that he was a killer and couldn't be trusted. After telling her this, he walks away, while Linda continues to berate him. By chance, while patrolling a car park, a policeman hears Celine as she tries to gain his attention, tied up and gagged in the trunk of Giallo's car.

Tags: suspenseful, cruelty, murder, violence, horror, flashback, revenge

Review:
In Torino, Celine ,Italy, a woman named Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner , Roman Polanski's wife) fears her sister , a fashion model girl named Celine (Elsa Pataky, at that time Brody's girlfriend) , may have been abducted .
The Inspector along with Linda start following the tracks that lead a cab man who might have jaundice and they go to a hospital.Classic though average Gialli with imaginatively staged gory killings by the master of horror, the talented writer/director Dario Argento .
Most recently, Argento directed a number of 'giallo' mystery thrillers which include Insomnio (2001), ¨Il Cartaio (2004)¨, and ¨Ti Piace Hitchcock?¨ (2005), as well as two creepy , supernatural-themed episodes of the USA TV cable anthology series "Masters of Horror".
In effect, "Argento" has become something of a buzzword for a certain type of movie brat: a slightly edgy (but not too edgy) name they can mention to show that they're a little off the beaten track (but not too far off).Oddly enough, Giallo represents something of a hybridization of the director's self-referentiality and the sort of fan idolatry that champions his films for their more superficial elements while ignoring the qualities that truly mark them out.
Although the first credit at the end of the film reads "written and directed by Dario Argento", the original script in fact originated from two American fans, Jim Agnew and Sean Keller, with Argento essentially being brought on as a director for hire.
The director has made conflicting statements as to his opinion of these films, but the lengthy scenes of Elsa Pataky being menaced and tortured in the killer's grimy underground lair are more reminiscent of Saw or Hostel than anything in Argento's past filmography.And there's the rub: despite being marketed as a return to the genre that made a name for Argento in the 1970s, Giallo...
Other than that, the movie might as well have been called "Routine Slasher" because there's nothing that recalls the glorious days of the Italian giallo here, no wink or homage or black-gloved killer stalking distraught heroines in kitsch/chic Rome apartments, countryside villas, and medieval architecture and certainly none of the Technicolor phantasmagoria Argento and his peers conjured on celluloid 30 years ago because anyone who has followed Argento's career knows he has been working in dark muted DV canvases for the past 10 years, this absence of style flooded with wooden acting, bad English from non-English speaking actors, and a script the sum of plot contrivance happenstance and logic jumps.
I couldn't believe the ratings for this movie and after watching it i really think that it deserves a solid 5 or 5.5.Biggest drawback is the yellow bad guy who is presented as a degenerated handicap who just wants to get rid of everything beautiful.
On the next morning, Linda reports in the precinct that Celine is missing and the sergeant in charge asks her to go to the basement to meet F.B.I. Inspector Enzo Avolfi (Adrien Brody) from the Special New York City Department that is investigating a serial-killer that kidnaps foreigners to destroy their beauty.
(Thinking about it, this movie can be seen as a bad parody about the giallo genre.) Adrian Brody and the beautiful women are the only things that stand out in this below average product.
Instead, Argento only loosely follows the giallo format, the grimy approach he adopts being more akin to the recent US 'torture porn' trend, a fact that has unsurprisingly caused something of a critical backlash from fans of Italian horror.But although Giallo clearly doesn't warrant its title, and, devoid of his usual visual flair and labyrinthine storytelling, is far from the director's best work, neither is it totally deserving of the drubbing it has received.The film moves along briskly enough, switching regularly between crime and police procedure to ensure that boredom never sets in; the hero cop-with-a-dark-past, Enzo Avolfi, is played with conviction by Adrien Brody; Emmanuelle Seigner makes for a decent enough side-kick; the rather lovely Elsa Pataky is required only to look scared and beautiful, but does so convincingly; and the strangely familiar killer is delightfully daft—an ugly, dummy-sucking, bandana-wearing taxi-driver with yellow skin (caused by a dose of Hepatitis C, inherited from his junkie mother) and a hatred of all things beautiful.Argento also finds time for a few seriously nasty moments, including a graphic hammer to the skull scene, a nasty bit of finger pruning (resulting in plenty of pumping blood), and a wince-inducing moment involving shards of broken glass.Whilst it is true that Argento's typical sense of style might be lacking on this occasion, there is still enough to enjoy about this film to make it worth a go—after all, even Argento at his worst is better than many other directors at their best..
This is one of the first times in his career that Argento didn't write the original screenplay himself, but he easily could have, since the film is chock-full of his usual trademarks, including misogynist torture, macho cop characters and a killer character with a hideous appearance and sick persona.
The sniveling killer pulls teeth and carves up the girls' pretty faces like he's on the set of the umpteenth unnecessary torture porn flick instead of a Dario Argento Giallo homage.
It's not like Argento didn't try to keep doing movies as if "Argento" was a genre of it's own - Trauma, The Stendhal Syndrome, Phantom of the Opera and even Sleepless, in part, all express the same thing: A legendary master of style on spare fumes.
And I dare to say, once you care to take interest in Argento as a film maker, a movie like Giallo is just as interesting as Inferno or Opera.
Rob Zobie's Halloween II is probably something you'll enjoy more, so I guess I'm actually recommending it.The key to Giallo is Adrien Brody in the title role, a bitter cop in Italy on the trail of an outlandish killer who traps beautiful girls in his taxi to make them just as ugly as he is and then kill them.
It's pretty sad to know a movie like "Giallo" was directed by Argento.
Since the late 1990s, Dario Argento has been a director in a state of serious decline, a development made even more crippling due to the fact that, at one time, this now-elderly filmmaker played a highly influential role in mapping out the cinematic landscape of Italian horror and mystery (dubbed "giallo" after its roots in seedy paperback crime novels).
Even the presence of the usually-reliable Adrien Brody cannot bring "Giallo" up from its low-rent depths; his performance a monosyllabic sleepwalk that, like Argento, never seems more than half-conscious..
With the police unwilling to help, she turns to Italian-American detective Enzo (Adrien Brody), who is deep into an investigation that stretches way back, involving many missing girls who turn up tortured and murdered at seemingly random spots.Former master of horror Dario Argento has been in deep decline since his 1970's heyday.
It beggars belief how the man that created some of the most elegant horror movies ever made can fail to raise even a moment of inspiration, and at times seems to parody the genre rather than showing any real love for it.After being promoted as being something of a return to form for the auteur and a return to director's roots, Giallo was given a very limited release (I believe it went straight-to-DVD here in the UK) after a verbal slamming from audiences and critics alike.
Any attempts to blur the lines between his miserable detective and the sadistic killer comes across as laughable, and the 'big reveal' that explains his back-story is just plain silly.For a film marketing itself as a giallo, the film lacks anything resembling the visual class or the sleazy atmosphere of the best of the genre, with Argento's camera glides feeling more like the director's futile attempts to polish a turd.
It would appear that Argento was trying to hark back to the good old days with this film - which takes the genre name as its own title - but unfortunately he's missed the mark rather badly.
When Linda's sister is abducted, she goes to the cops and is put in touch with FBI agent Enzo Avolfi, who immediately jumps to the conclusion that Linda's sister has been abducted by the killer and proceeds to let Linda help him in every area of the investigation.The trailer got my hopes up with its line "the city of Milan is known for its beautiful women, but someone is preying on them" - of course, the fashion house is the iconic setting of genre favourites such as Blood and Black Lace; but Argento is keen to skip over this and get straight to the killer, which is a massive shame.
Set in Italy, a woman gets kidnapped by a psychopath killer so her sister (Emmanuelle Seigner) teams up with an Inspector (Adrien Brody) to try and locate her.
She works better with others When "mediocre" comes into play with an Argento film you know things aren't good ...
A Turino model is kidnapped by a sicko serial killer and a troubled detective teams with the girl's sister in a race against time to save her...That scenario has not only been done to death, it's been done better and any episode of TV's more intricately plotted CSI generates more suspense.
The title (Italian for "yellow") refers to the jaundiced killer's skin tone and although professionally phoned-in with some nice use of color, the only-skin-deep endeavor is devoid of mystery (the true meaning of "giallo"), surprisingly sans set pieces, and definitely a rip-off for Argento fans hoping for a return to form.
Do not ever tell your girlfriend that you have watched this or that you want to watch this or ever suggesting this to watch together on a movie night.Maybe there could be a good sequel to this with a serial killer strapping his victims on a chair and make them watch this film twice and then let them go....it could not get any worse than that..
I was honestly not very interested in watching Giallo, because I had the fear of taking another huge disappointment from the once brilliant director Dario Argento, due to all the very negative reviews it received.
The identity from the killer is revealed way too soon and the obligatory "surprising" ending is so abrupt and predictable that it looks like a bad joke.But well...the truth is that Argento's biggest talent during the best moment from his career never was on his screenplays, but on his nightmarish vision and imaginative direction, whose influence can be noticed in such diverse filmmakers like Tim Burton and Quentin Tarantino.
However, Argento's direction in here is absolutely apathetic and listless, something which exacerbates the bad screenplay.The words "apathetic" and "listless" also apply to Adrien Brody's performance in this film; I consider him to be an excellent actor, but he was obviously not very interested in his character.
But no more ;from "two evil eyes" onward ,Argento's works fail to excite me ;it must be the screenplays;in the sixties and seventies efforts,the stories were complicated ,labyrinthine,with unexpected twists ;there were knowing lightings and a sense of space ("Inferno") few directors have."Giallo" is a non-story,or a psycho killer story the average viewer has seen at least a hundred times or more ;E.Seigner,with her sullen face ,is not able to generate any emotion;and we can only dream of what Argento would have done with highly talented Brody in his heyday!certainly not this cop with a dark past!As for the killer,he is not even scary;Brody himself was much frightening in "oxygen" ..
People are naturally comparing this to the classics that Italian director Dario Argento has provided us with & sadly coming to the conclusion that this is a bad film because it's not up there with them.
Now this either one of the most genius attempts, to spoof the "Giallo" movies or just another proof that Argento "lost his touch" (if you believe he even had something like that to begin with).
Torino in Italy.Serial killer called Yellow is killing beautiful foreign women because he is ugly as hell.He kidnaps them first in his taxicab and proceeds to drug them.Then he mutilates his victims and photographs his deeds before each gruesome kill.Linda(Polanski's wife Emmanuelle Seigner)teams up with detective Enzo(Adrien Brody)and they both try to stop elusive killer before he kills Linda's captured sister.Being a fan of Dario Argento's gialli I was a bit disappointed with "Giallo".Actually I avoided watching this film for some time.First of all the killer called Yellow looks truly stupid.Still the cinematography of "Giallo" is truly beautiful and the acting is quite good.There are also some unpleasant scenes of gore and carnal mutilations,but the film lacks suspense and truly engaging story.7 slashings out of 10..
This thriller attracted my attention because of its beautiful location in Torino and the big names of director Dario Argento and actor Adrien Brody.
The latest movie from Dario Argento, the master of the giallo film, is called, perhaps unsurprisingly, Giallo.
This is a bit perverse from a man whose output has been made up almost exclusively of gialli, or at the very least non-giallo movies that retain many of the conventions of the genre, i.e. the mystery killer attacks of the supernatural horror films Suspiria and Inferno.
I have read that Argento was actually a director for hire in this movie and that would not surprise me as the feeling I had watching this was that the director wasn't entirely giving his all in this film.
That makes for a morally ambiguous story where one wonders whether the protagonist of the movie is any better than the antagonist.Genre: thriller/horror, year of release: 2009, director: Dario Argento, writers: Jim Agnew, Sean Keller and Dario Argento, plot: catch the murderer, themes: childhood trauma, alienation, madness, sexual perversion and moral.
Now Enzo is forced to work with Linda to find her sister before Celine gets killed by the psychopath.Directed by Dario Argento (Opera, Phenomena, Trauma) made an straightforward thriller with some elements of horror and an few moments of black comedy.
It's when Midori kidnaps his latest victim Amercan fashion model Celine, Eisa Patsky, who for some strange reason has an Italian accent that her concerned sister who's also beautiful Linda, Emmanulla Seigner, gets into the act in trying to find her before she ends up as dead meat.So far so good and it's gets even better or worse in how you look at it.
However, guessing the killer's identity is no central point of the movie, it actually gets revealed half the way into the film.
Half New Yorker Homicide detective Enzo Avolfi (Adrien Brody) soon realizes that the disappearance of the beautiful young woman must be the work of a pattern killer whose objective is to destroy beauty...Generally speaking GIALLO has its highs and lows.
Funny how the reputation of Dario Argento - one of Seventies' masters of horror - keeps attracting respectable actors like Max Von Sydow, Thomas Kretschmann, Liam Cunningham and Rutger Hauer, no matter how atrocious the director's late-career efforts have been.Here the one badly slumming is Adrien Brody in a double role as both a veteran detective and the serial killer he is hunting down, the titular Giallo.
(although Avolfi is extremely stubborn in giving up,especially since he had to go on a long search to find his mothers killer.)luckily for them,a victim is discovered who is just about surviving.Talking to the victim shortly before her final breath,the victim tells them that the killer has bright yellow skin.Realiseing that they now have a strong lead,and that time is running out for Linda's sister,they both go hunting for the "Giallo" serial killer...View on the film:When I initially heard that the lead villain in Argento's latest film had yellow skin,my first hope was that he would create a wild,comic-book influence stylish thriller,with hopefully taking some inspiration from the yellow character that Nick Stahl played in Robert Rodriguez wild and stylised Noir Sin City.Along with Sin City,I was also hoping the there would be a possibility that this film would be a modern twist on Mario Bava's future-landmark The Girl Who Knew Too Much,or even Lucio Fulci's The Cats Bain,with Argento showing someones murderous obsession with the still-stunning Giallo genre.Sadly,Argento and the writers decided to go in the other direction.For the first hour of the films 90 minute running time,the movie looks as if it is just trying to be a very poorly made CSI type of (failed) pilot episode,with the characters,and the directing all firmly sticking to the middle of the road.And whilst this style of a routine thriller would be an okay debut for a first time director,the swipes that Argento takes at the Giallo genre and the Torture-Horror sub-genre destroys most of the good will towards the film,by the Giallo shots feeling about 30 years too late,and the torture scenes looking very poorly filmed.
(and a short scene of the killer sitting in-front of a computer,having more than a whiff of jealousy.)Thankfully,some light does appear for the film,with the last half an hour actually having Argento give it some moody lighting ,and making the serial killers hide out be somewhere a bit different.For his performance as Enzo,Adrien Brody gives the character a voice,which seems to suggest that he is trying to give the inspector a Film Noir style tone.Sadly like the directing and the screenplay,Brody's voice fails to give the film an extra bit of mood,by instead just sounding like he has a dry throat for almost the whole film.Final view on the film:An extremely uncreative, tied-looking none-Giallo- thriller,with a highly disappointing screenplay and mostly middle-of the-road directing from someone who could have done so much more with the film....
In fact, remove Adrien Brody from this film and thats what you are left with - a bad 80s TV movie.And the music.
Giallo is a movie directed by the Italian master Dario Argento, a guy whose movies seem to be getting a lot of hate recently.
I don't know why Dario Argento had Adrien Brody play the detective, and the serial killer, but it wasn't a wise choice.