Review of The Element of Crime (1984) by Eric B — 25 Mar 2010

The problem with this movie is that it runs out of ideas about 3/4 of the way through, and what has been heretofore a stylistically brilliant, complex, and masochistically enjoyable film becomes strangely predictable--the trajectory of the plot becomes immediately clear to everyone but Fisher, who should have been able to figure a key twist out earlier, and who clearly hasn't seen Vertigo. Meanwhile, the bizarre visuals lose their freshness--a shot of someone lying on the ground, surrounded by metal objects was effective once, but it winds up losing its power to surprise ("Oh, so he's sleeping on forks this time").

Still, the movie is fantastic in the early run, while it's still a dystopic nightmare (especially the autopsy scene), and it feels like a macabre smoothie--a blend of noir, Hitchcock, Lang, and Lynch, with a beautifully horrifying neo-noir expressionism. It just can't quite sustain its whole running time.