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Movie Reviews: Crime in Our Time
One of my absolute favorites. Though it could still be called a “crime film,” it’s more accurately an investigation story, or a detective story. What’s brilliant about it is that the investigative element of the movie is the most thrilling part of it. There are a couple heart-stopping scenes of the serial killer at work, but my favorite moments in the movie are when the characters who are reporters and detectives sit around and discuss the possibilities. I love how incredibly complicated the movie was unfraid to be; it upsets what we have come to believe is the natural order of things (the CSI way, you might call it) in which the investigation takes a single, direct path and ends conclusively with an arrest. The real-life crimes of the Zodiac killer occurred all over the state of California, in multiple jurisdictions, and the movie dramatizes the difficulties of sharing information and case files in a pre-digital world. In just over two hours of run time the movie also zeroes in on at least three different suspects, convincing the audience that this time they’ve definitely got their man, only to scrap everything—not necessarily because they’ve proved someone innocent, but just because the evidence is inadequate. Finally—and this is seriously a narrative accomplishment—despite the fact that no one has ever been prosecuted for the murder, the movie manages to close its story out in a satisfactory way. It feels closed. It has incredible period music (“Hurdy Gurdy Man”!), dynamic direction by David Fincher, and some unexpected humor mostly courtesy of Robert Downey Jr. Also stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo, and about a billion “Hey, it’s that guy”s.
I really think this movie would have made more of an impression on me if I had seen it when it first came out (before The Departed, instead of after). Doesn’t it seem that Scorsese was repeating himself just a little bit? You’ve got Daniel Day-Lewis playing the Jack Nicholson role, Leonardo DiCaprio playing the Leonardo DiCaprio role, Cameron Diaz pointlessly playing the pointless Vera Farmiga role. You’ve got the mole plot, the young man who engages in a mentorship with someone he intends ultimately to take down. The woman who is only there to sleep with both of them and complicate things. I love The Departed, frankly, and it’s too bad for Gangs of New York that I didn’t see it first, because I might have loved Gangs instead.
What I did really like about this is the historical angle: the immigrant life, the warring factions all trying to build a society out of lawlessness and gain power out of poverty. The opening fight scene was pretty incredible, as were the sets, like the underground catacombs where the Irishmen hung out and plotted. And Daniel Day-Lewis is pretty much always a barn-burner, preferable even (dare I say it?) to Nicholson. Also, the closing shot (which time-lapses into present-day New York) is amazing.
Cultural Civilian 