... the author of a movie so good as "La Haine", and a director I appreciated a lot comes to Hollywood and does this real piece of crap. It's unbelievable. I went to see this movie because of Mathieu Kassovitz, and I even didn't pay attention to my feeling that this could be real standard. But I wasn't ready to face something so terribly poor, boring and offensive. Halle Berry comes out from her Oscar and that's a great excuse for getting larger paycheques in return of average performances, like the one she does here. Robert Downey Jr. looks like he is always chosen to be the light wisecracker that can't look serious even if he tries (this role was reprised from another very weak movie: "The Gingerbread Man"). Penelope Cruz manages to continue being annoying, but in this one she can lightly pass for a mentally ill person. The real disappointment, however, is coming out of this movie and feeling that you already have seen this picture several times. It feels like a mix of horror flicks in their most seen parts, that ends up being offensive for its shameless rip-offs (John Ottman's score is a carbon copy of James Newton Howard's "The Sixth Sense"), utter predictability (c'mon, how many countless times have we seen the lonely character driving at night beneath the soaking rain and thunderstorm?), and many serious plot holes (can anyone explain how that final coda can exist?). The only pluses in this movie are the technical ones, the ones that money can buy. But with 60 million dollars even a film student with a little amount of flare can do better. Anyway, I can only hope that the creative process of this movie was the usual: studios took over the creative work, and Kassovitz became a puppet. And maybe he comes back to France and finally returns to serious movies (and Les Rivieres Pourpres wasn't good either). I can only hope. Until then, we'll have this poor excuse to make the audience jump. If you're even a little bit demanding, you'll come out kicking the furniture. Good for saturday night DVD sessions, little more.
Review of Gothika
