By Richard Winters
My Rating: 3 out of 10
4-Word Review: Losing touch of reality.
Overly stylish, pretentious drama detailing an actor’s slow decent into madness. Henry (Tom McCamus) an otherwise anonymous bank employee finally gets his big break as an actor playing the part of a cop on a TV show, but then starts to take the role home with him. Intoxicated with the sense of power that he gets playing a man in uniform he eventually can no longer differentiate between the role and himself.
On one hand this is a fascinating and incisive drama. It examines an ambiguous area rarely touched upon anywhere else. Namely how an actor ‘becomes’ his role and how he learns to turn it off. It also questions whether anyone, even a trained actor, can be someone they are not as well as analyzing people’s need to become someone who is important, powerful, and in control.
Yet the film takes this and then suffocates it with a new wave mentality and a thumping techno music score. It looks like something made by a young guy who watched too many episodes of “Miami Vice”. The stylization gets strained. Trying to be both ‘important’ and trendy never gels and the attempt at mixing ‘real life’ grittiness with an artsy flair gets annoying.
The pacing is also off. The character becomes unhinged too quickly. Then we are treated to a never ending scenario of ‘will he or won’t he’ go completely bonkers. There’s about three climaxes too many and a couple of truly unnecessary scenes including a bank robbery, which is particularly dumb.
Star McCamus does his part well, but he also has a really big mole at the top of his forehead, which after a while becomes distracting. Brigitte Bako as the female love interest is pleasant to look at and an overall sweet character. The rest of the characters though are too dull, clichéd, or corrupt to be likable or interesting.
My Rating: 3 out of 10
Released: September 10, 1993
Runtime: 1Hour 39Minutes
Rated R
Director: David Wellington
Studio: Alliance Communications
Available: DVD
Scopophilia 