(Review originally written at 2 October 2009)
Nothing wrong with watching this movie. It offers some decent entertainment and it has the right required ingredients for its genre. It also is far from the best that the genre has to offer though and the story itself is pretty far fetched at times and told pretty messy and unnecessarily complicated.
No, it isn't the best thing Fritz Lang has done throughout his career. Lang is the man who brought us classics like "Metropolis" and "M" early in his career but later continued to make some mediocre movies as well. This is one of those movies, though I have also seen far worse movies done by him.
It's hard to say whether it's the story or storytelling that makes this movie a bit unlikely and unnecessarily complex at times. I would say it's the latter though. The movie makes things too hard on itself at times. Still the movie has plenty of redeeming qualities in it.
It's a pretty nice looking movies visually and the movie breaths the right atmosphere throughout. It has some nice black & white cinematography, with some nice use of shadows. You could say that this is a real film-noir, with more thriller elements to it. Lang tried to be Hitchock like with this movie but with that seemed to forget that he had talent and vision enough of his own, which goes to waste a bit with this movie.
As a genre movie it's still a very well watchable one. It offers plenty to those who like the genre but it's far fetched story and not always to great storytelling prevent this movie from being a genre classic or one among Lang's top-list of movies to watch.
7/10
Nothing wrong with watching this movie. It offers some decent entertainment and it has the right required ingredients for its genre. It also is far from the best that the genre has to offer though and the story itself is pretty far fetched at times and told pretty messy and unnecessarily complicated.
No, it isn't the best thing Fritz Lang has done throughout his career. Lang is the man who brought us classics like "Metropolis" and "M" early in his career but later continued to make some mediocre movies as well. This is one of those movies, though I have also seen far worse movies done by him.
It's hard to say whether it's the story or storytelling that makes this movie a bit unlikely and unnecessarily complex at times. I would say it's the latter though. The movie makes things too hard on itself at times. Still the movie has plenty of redeeming qualities in it.
It's a pretty nice looking movies visually and the movie breaths the right atmosphere throughout. It has some nice black & white cinematography, with some nice use of shadows. You could say that this is a real film-noir, with more thriller elements to it. Lang tried to be Hitchock like with this movie but with that seemed to forget that he had talent and vision enough of his own, which goes to waste a bit with this movie.
As a genre movie it's still a very well watchable one. It offers plenty to those who like the genre but it's far fetched story and not always to great storytelling prevent this movie from being a genre classic or one among Lang's top-list of movies to watch.
7/10
No comments: