Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009)

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Rating 1


Directed by Peter Hyams

Written by Peter Hyams, based on the 1956 screenplay by Douglas Morrow

Starring Amber Tamblyn (Ella Crystal), Jesse Metcalfe (C J Nicholas), Michael Douglas (Mark Hunter), Joel David Moore (Corey Finley), Orlando Jones (Ben Nickerson) and Lawrence P Beron (Anthony Merchant)


An investigative news reporter looking for a story that will take his career to the next level suspects that the District Attorney, who is hotly tipped to be the next State Governor, has been deliberately planting evidence to secure convictions in high profile murder cases. To prove his suspicions, he deliberately fabricates circumstantial evidence against himself in an unsolved murder, but his plan goes horribly wrong.

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‘Beyond a Reasonable Doubt’ is a 2009 remake of a classic 1956 film with the same title. That film, starring Dana Andrews and Joan Fontaine, was the last American film directed by the legendary Austrian film director Fritz Lang, who was responsible for several landmark films including the 1927 German silent masterpiece ‘Metropolis’. This flat remake is anything but a classic.

Michael Douglas is reasonably effective as the smarmy District Attorney, but his character, like everything else in this film, is far too flimsy. Jesse Metcalfe gives the most charisma-free acting performance I have had the misfortune of viewing in a very long time and manages to bring down Amber Tamblyn, an intelligent and more than competent actress, with him. There is no on-screen chemistry with Metcalfe and her performance here is lifeless and uninvolving. She put me in mind of Sandra Bullock, without ever managing to project the spark that Bullock can bring to her performances, even in some of her more regrettable film choices.

The first 45 minutes or so are dire, killed by Metcalfe’s calamitous absence of presence. Matters do improve after that when Tamblyn takes centre-stage, but the climactic scenes are badly botched and the twist is so blatantly obvious, almost from the start and without needing to have any prior familiarity with the original film, that to say it’s an anti-climax would be a gross understatement. The film even manages to squeeze in a painfully dull and predictable car chase.

‘Beyond a Reasonable Doubt’ has a zero rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 22 reviews. I have no doubt it is not the only film to ever receive a zero rating, but it is the first one that I have come across.

Writer and director Peter Hyams has had a long career, which has produced a mixed bag of results, from interesting earlier outings like ‘Capricorn One’ and ‘Outland’ to the slightly more recent horror films ‘Relic’ and ‘End of Days’, with a couple of Jean-Claude Van Damme films in between. His past record suggests that he is a better director than this lame and hackneyed debacle would indicate.

Review posted 23 November 2009


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Hatchet

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Rating 2½


Written and Directed by Adam Green

Starring Joel David Moore, Tamara Feldman, Deon Richmond, Mercedes McNab, Joleigh Fioreavanti, Parry Shen, Richard Riehle, Patrika Darbo and Kane Hodder

Cameo appearances by Robert Englund and Todd Terry


A group of tourists in New Orleans for Mardi Gras take a night time “horror” excursion into the bayou, only to discover that the horror is not make believe.

‘Hatchet’ was promoted as “Old School American Horror”. One promotional poster told us, “It’s not a remake. It’s not a sequel. And it’s not based on a Japanese one.” It’s a deliberately gory spoof – a comedy/horror made specifically for fans of the gore-fest end of the horror genre.

It isn’t as clever as ‘Shaun Of The Dead’ and it isn’t as likeable as ‘Slither’, but equally it is certainly not as repellent as Eli Roth’s well-received ‘Cabin Fever’. It is, however, very silly and quite successful in achieving its aim.

The gore is ridiculously over the top, deliberately so. It is not in any authentic way scary, but it does ultimately become both boring and desensitising, which is probably not a good thing. Equally, there is a limit to the number of bare breasts we need to have flashed at the camera by young women before we get the point and can move on – and here we are over-saturated with them within the first five minutes or so. Having said that, the film does have some funny moments and the cast is genuinely likeable, including cameo appearances by a couple of horror genre stalwarts.

This is not a film to watch unless you can stomach buckets of offal and fake blood being literally splashed everywhere. Also, a certain tolerance for puerile teenage-boy humour is needed. Taken on those terms, it is very effective and really rather good.

Adam Green and Joel David Moore went on to make the altogether more serious ‘Spiral’, a very interesting and worthwhile film, although Moore has subsequently found himself in the universally loathed and decidedly offensive-sounding Paris Hilton vehicle ‘The Hottie and the Nottie’.



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Spiral

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Rating 3½


Directed by Adam Green and Joel David Moore

Written by Jeremy Daniel Boreing and Joel David Moore

Starring Joel David Moore, Zachary Levi and Amber Tamblyn


Mason (Joel David Moore) is an aspiring artist and jazz enthusiast. He is also socially dysfunctional and borderline disturbed. He works for a telemarketing company, although he is clearly unsuitable for the job. His floor manager Berkeley (Zachary Levi) is the only person he is able to communicate with on any level. Mason’s life slowly begins to change when he meets Amber (Amber Tamblyn), a friendly but seemingly lonely young woman who has come to work at the company. Mason and Amber form a friendship and she starts to sit for him while he paints a series of portraits of her. They soon become lovers, but Mason is haunted by a recurring nightmare.

This is a mood piece, its theme established by the rainy setting of Portland, Oregon, and the effective use of jazz as the background music. Early shots of a street-corner diner immediately bring to mind Edward Hopper’s famous ‘Nighthawks at the Diner’ painting, with its lost and displaced figures. Although described by some as a horror film, presumably because Moore and his co-director Adam Green had previously worked together on the slasher movie ‘Hatchet’, it is no such thing. As has been pointed out elsewhere, it has more in common with Hitchcockian thrillers – for example, ‘Vertigo’ – although that is not to say it should be considered as a work in anyway comparable to the master filmmaker.

Critics were mixed in their reaction to the film. Some were favourable, but others were very hostile. The film critic Brian Orndorf referred to “poor actors” and a “rotten screenplay” and described the film as, “a low-budget cinematic learning curve that should’ve remained a private educational tool for two filmmakers in dire need of storytelling practice.”

Admittedly, the film is flawed and the eventual outcome all too obvious. Moore’s portrayal of Mason doesn’t so much take him to the edge of madness – he has long since jumped over into the void. It is not immediately clear why Amber trusts him so readily, unless perhaps we choose to suspect she is not all she seems, a suggestion the film does not obviously promote. The strange friendship between Mason and Berkeley and the bond that clearly holds them together should have been explored more deeply. Having said this, the film is about a person whose mind has fragmented and it is presented to us in a similarly fragmented way. Its faults accepted, the story is effectively told at a leisurely pace and the characters are interesting enough to hold our attention.

I liked it a lot.



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