Secret in Their Eyes (2015)

Spoiler Alerts - I LOVED the original film from Argentina and thought it was flawless. What I have learned on my own is to not watch previews and not compare films with the original film. The acting was spectacular and I truly appreciated and loved the subtle uniqueness of the story line which is very similar to the original. Everyone was fantastic specifically Julie Roberts.

I'm not a Spanish speaker, but was lucky enough to have been able to see the original (with English subtitles). Yes, I agree the original is a terrific film. However, it wasn't widely distributed outside of a handful of big cities in the US, so it went unseen by and unknown to most American moviegoers. Ignore the condescension about this film from the big city art house film goers who wrote reviews dismissing it. Its plot will seem new and refreshing to many who never got the opportunity to see the Argentinian film. This remake brings the story to US audiences with some changes to make it more relatable.I'm not one who wants to give away spoilers, but I will say you've never seen Julia Roberts in a role quite like this one. It will make you wish she had taken more chances in the roles she chose during the peak of her career. Here she's the mother of a young girl who was brutally murdered, and the film is about the 13-year quest to find and charge the killer. I'll just leave it at that.

The acting in this film is first rate, the direction is first rate and it has a superb ending. Julia Roberts proves she is more than just a pretty face and Kidman gives an understated performance and allows the cast to take front and centre.I scored it 8 as I thought the pace a little too slow and the backwards and forwards in time , so beloved by some directors, didn't quite work for me. These are minor criticisms of a film that I enjoyed from start to finish.

In this movie, there were way too many flashback scenes and it was often way too confusing to tell if it was a flashback scene or not. Each time it cut to a new scene, you had to figure out each time if it was from 2002 or 2015. Further complicating the matter was how the actors and actresses had the exact same hair-styles and looked the same ages in the 2002 and the 2015 scenes. If they would've shot the 2002-era scenes first and then had a make-up and hair crew change the hairstyles and make-up enough to make it easier to tell which decade the scenes were from, that would've helped a lot. Better yet, just doing the film in chronological order would've made the move far better and a lot more enjoyable to watch. Using flashbacks when everyone involved was too lazy and unprofessional to make it work knocked the movie down from a solid 7 to a weak 4.