A Crime (2006)

SPOILERS!! I feel like I got drunk and wandered into the middle of a very strange conversation between a guy who is obsessed with dog racing, a crazy French woman, and a caveman. I think I can see what they were trying for, but oh my did it fall short. It was disjointed, disorienting, and confusing.You start the movie and some enormous leaps of logic are made about the cabbie being the killer....why the heck did he focus on this cab? How could he have noticed this cabbie's freaking ring, but not a cab number or company? Then you're transported to the future where there is a very strange French woman that sleeps is crazy, drinks a lot, and sleeps around. Who is this crazy lady and why is she obsessed with her neighbor.Then comes Harvey Kietel. Man, I love HK, but the direction, editing, SOMETHING was just off with him. Talk about a caveman. My gosh.I gave this every chance I could, but it was not good. I gave it two stars due to a couple of cool cinematography shots, angles, etc. But that is it. Don't waste your time.

Although this was an intriguing film and Mr. Keitel is always a pleasure to watch, the screenplay left me disappointed. In the first place, all the husband did was glimpse a taxi passing him in the opposite direction and from that deduced that the taxi driver killed his wife. No motive, no explanation. We just see her dead body and leap ahead three years to see the man obsessed with his wife's murder. For no reason that I can ascertain, even the cops take it for granted that the taxi driver was the culprit; all this based upon one brief glance of a speeding taxi. We (the viewers) didn't even get a good look, but the husband managed to note a long gash in the driver's door, a large ring on the driver's hand and a red jacket the driver was wearing. Now we're expected to believe that three years later the murderer is still driving around in his taxi with his red jacket and big ring. In the end, a broke and homeless taxi driver and a broke woman suddenly have a nice vehicle to drive and in it she finds a large ring which presumably tells us that after all, this man is actually the taxi driver who murdered a woman three years earlier. If I were a cop, she and the writer are the only culprits I'd throw in jail.

Vincent (Norman Reedus) is still suffering the loss of his wife killed three years ago by some psychopath taxi driver. He can't move with his life so his neighbor (Emmanuelle Béart) who has a crush on him tries to help him by trying to find this killer. Easy? Maybe. So she picks a random taxi driver (Harvey Keitel) and starts to get involved with this strange guy and she's gonna invent that this guy is really the killer of Vincent's wife. And then...The story behind the movie "A Crime" is one of those intriguing stories where the next movement, the next step is always awaited. There are many surprises, not in that clichéd sense of plot twists, but just in the way that you can't see the obvious, it doesn't exist here. A quiet and slow paced story where the development of the characters and their actions is more important than to really know if they're gonna find the killer or what's gonna happen with Roger the taxi driver. But this is not a perfect screenplay, there's few things wrong with it (the beginning was way too fast, in one moment Vincent see his wife dead and then the movie leaps three years later; and his first moments with his neighbor are quite strange, not well explained). But besides that the movie floats very well and leaves the viewer wanting more of it. "A Crime" runs about 100 minutes but I think that it could be more longer specially in terms of characters development (mostly Vincent), showing the previous life of the main characters and things like that because these characters are presented and we're feel like "Can we like these characters? What's their reason behind their actions"? It misses much.The performances are good, most notably Harvey Keitel (How come this guy gets incredible roles where he has to perform erotic scenes at the age of 60? Things that even younger actors don't do frequently and I'm even comparing him with his young co-star Reedus who only has one scene with Béart and it's not even close of Keitel's seductive scenes with Béart). Béart was quite convincible in some parts as the desperate woman who wants to be with Vincent but instead she got trapped and got romantically and sexually involved with the taxi driver. I really liked Norman Reedus mysterious performance here but I wished he could have more scenes and a better character development. Most of his lines are whispered so I advise you to turn up the volume or you're probably miss what he's saying. A surprising, effective and great film to watch. 9/10

Some people might have two problems with the film: 1. It's rather old fashioned (which is a good thing in my opinion, I don't like the regular hyped mainstream trash). The plot is the kind of story that could come from a novel of Patricia Highsmith, and the look of the film is more like it's from the late 70's or early 80's. 2. The pretty complex story with a lot of strange (and maybe) almost unbelievable coincidences. And you don't get a simple positive character for identification. Exact the same way many french thrillers from the good old times were working (especially those of Clouzot). Though sometimes these films seem a bit too over-constructed (and I must admit I had this problem when I first saw Clouzot's "Les Diaboliques", 1955). But when you accept this (and life itself sometimes surprises us with strange coincidences too), you will see an excellent, very emotional thriller with great performances. You'll never know what happens next!