Wednesday, May 29, 2013
HITCH HIKER
Today's movie is the first of four Ira Sachs' films that I will be watching.
Forties rich. The sets and costumes overflow with the genuine feel of the times. In movies. I was there. Both the real and the reel.
This story about a husband and wife and a best friend and a mistress for the husband, soon to be a girl friend for the best friend, is straight out of the films of the time and, with a twist of homicide in the air, it doesn't fall too far from the kind of film that Hitchcock turned out once a year.
There is a bimbo, but a pretty one. There is playing around with poison.
There is even a shifty hitchhiker (get it hitch?) which would be an ideal mcguffin, the clue that the master always threw in to keep us off balance.
There is one more similarity and that is the movie's coldness. No heat. Even the romancing is bloodless and routine.
There are clever bits inserted here and there to underscore the plot. A man on the street trips and strews papers all over a sidewalk, a screenplay perhaps?
It was fun to watch. Patricia Clarkson is the wife. Love watching her. Chris Cooper, the husband. Pierce Brosnan the "best" friend and Rachel McAdams is the near bimbo.
I liked it. I won't see it again but I will remember it.
A 3 out of Netflix5.
Labels: films
