The Last Days of Summer
Written: Aug 20 '00 (Updated Feb 16 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: visually arresting and disturbing
Cons: chickens out on the subplots and Jennifer Lopez should have gone in for a de-glamming
The Bottom Line: I wouldn't see it repeatedly, except just to watch the special effects. That's really all it's got going for it.
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| AsiaBrew's Full Review: |
Its already the middle of August and Hollywood is getting set to switch off from adrenaline-action mode and unto dramatic-let's-get-us-an-Oscar-Nomination mode. Summer is made to get the bucks, fall is get the awards to make the bucks. The Cell is stuck at the butt end of summer which is pretty smart because it would not have survived the wham-bam action flicks starring Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson and Nicholas Cage that started off the first days of summer. With all its grand special effects it is able to hold its own against the watered down lightweights such as Hollow Man and What Lies Beneath. True the Cell does have hollow moments that stick out profusely, but it keeps it from getting too smart for its own good.
The story is takes a bit of its plot from Silence of the Lambs. A spunky but determined woman must go head to head with a psychotic serial killer, Carl Stargher. Stargher, (Vincent D'Onofrio) however is no Hannibal Lecter and Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez), not even on a good day, is no Clarice Starling, but Lopez and D'Onofrio aren't trying to be them, they're just concentrating on their characters and their movie. Catherine Deane is a child psychologist who has been chosen to work in an experimental program that can allow a person to enter the mind of another person. Catherine, when we first meet her, is trying to help a young billionaire's son who is lying in a coma after a freak accident at sea. I would've liked to have known a bit more about the boy's condition because there are hints of something more interesting behind the boys coma. Obviously the director wasn't skilled enough to handle any subplots of the movie. This is one of those hollow points in the movie, information is just thrown around without any reason or explanation for it.
Anyway, someplace else Carl Stragher is stalking his next victim. Stargher suffers from Weiland's schizophrenia, although he doesn't know it, all he knows is that he gets violent spasms and that he must take aspirin to ease the pain. One of the symptoms of his particulat schizophrenia is the desire to feel weightless and we're shown this early in the movie. While Stargher is stalking his next victim, the FBI has already discovered his last victim and using some good old fashioned detective work discover dog hair on the body belonging to an albino German Shepard which eventually leads them to Stargher. Stargher, has already captured his last victim and imprisoned her within a cell that after 40 hours fills with water, drowning the victim. The FBI finally capture Stargher though he is found unconscious in his home due to the Weiland's schizophrenia. Somehow the FBI are led to the foundation that Catherine Deane works at and persuade her to go into Stargher's mind and find out where he hid his latest victim. We are then taken into a serial killers version of Narnia.
This movie could be lumped into the same argument that X-Men was, that it tried to be too smart for its own good, but actually I think the director Tarsem, shied away from being too smart with this film. Maybe he was coerced by the producers or the studio to edit out some scenes that may have held some depth to them because they thought a summer audience wasn't interested in thinking during a movie (don't you just hate being considered a foregone conclusion?). there were attempts in this film to show some emotionally depths. while Lopez spelunks through the serial killer's mind she meets up with the 'positive' side of Carl Stargher, the child within him and being a child psychologist she tries to gain his trust hoping that will help win Carl's trust and tell her where the missing girl is hidden. This is as far as the movie goes in trying to invoke emotion within the audience and this is as far as you should go in trying to gain anything from this film. If you want to see this movie ignore the fact that you have never seen a child psychologist wear pink lip gloss and hip clothing or smoke a joint (although my friend Martin tells me that every psychologist he has ever met smokes the doobie!). Don't frustrate yourself with the subplots that are never explored, just sit back and be prepared to be very disturbed by this very unsettling movie.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
AsiaBrew
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Member: S C
Location: New York, NY
Reviews written: 114
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