WAZ – or W[delta]Z – or, frankly, weren’t
The first real bust of the festival, not counting self-absorbed animation. I don’t know if I could have told from the EIFF’s blurb – I suspect I was distracted by the presence of Stellan Skarsgård, one of those actors one sees as always reliable. But then, that’s the Gene Hackman fallacy – it doesn’t necessarily mean that the film’s any good…
And fair enough, Skarsgård is a compelling, looming, melancholic Scandinavian presence in the film – but that just begs the question, why hasn’t he been cast in a Henning Mankell adaptation, instead of what is basically an overly steroidal episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. (Actually, is it really called ‘Special’ Victims Unit? I mean, thinking about it, doesn’t that worry you even more?)
It’s not like C.S.I., despite the level of gore. C.S.I. is mainly concerned with the super-hot ease with which crimes are solved, while Law & Order has this po-faced solemnity, like car-crash rubberneckers, while it grinds out every last humiliation on its victims.
W[delta]Z’s central conceit is a particularly egregious version of this type of story – the gruesomely violated victim who turns serial killer to inflict even more gruesome revenge on the perpetrators. But there are other parallels too, interspersed with a few ‘serious’ movie tropes to differentiate it from serial format TV. So in addition to the steely blonde rookie detective, every other cop is corrupt.
There is a pseudo-scientific trigger to the ‘victim’s revenge methodology, based around the concept of the selfish gene (I blame Richard Dawkins). This provides the link to the obligatory red herring suspect, provided by creepy science dude Paul Kaye (no, really). Don’t expect me to explain the rationale – the crux of it being that she tortures people until they’re prepared to kill their nearest and dearest to make her stop. The climactic twist (that her final victim isn’t one of the punks who attacked her, but Skarsgård’s morose cop, who’s responsible for getting him and the rest of his improbably interracial gang acqitted) is in fact quite well handled, mostly because of Skarsgård.
But that, and some efficiently bone-shaking tension building, only serves to highlight that the film is just as exploitative as the torture porn that it purports to be subverting – and in some ways it’s worse – it’s no less gratuitous, yet tries to hide behind a self-righteous façade.
But to be honest, what really kills the film is the shoddy writing. It isn’t simply that in these days of wall-to-wall C.S.I. and Law & Order, no writer should expect to be able to second guess his audience (The killer/victim taunts Skarsgård, asking if anyone has worked out Skarsgård’s motivation for helping the punk – well, yeah…). It’s that some (most) of the writing is just downright bad – from clunky exposition, to pointless character motivation, to just plain lousy dialogue.
For example, in response to the enigmatic symbols carved on the victims, starting with that title’s W[delta]Z, the steely blonde rookie detective announces: “This is algebra… the killer won’t stop until he’s finished the equation.” So, you’ve been watching Law & Order too, huh?
Alarm bells probably should have rung when the film’s intro session revealed that not even the film-makers could ascertain whether the film should be called W[delta]Z or WAZ – having so little conviction in your story’s central premise is no recipe for success.
The film has a convincingly bleak aesthetic, but it’s overwhelmed by increasingly cartoonishly grim sets. Fun fact – director Tom Shankland’s previous work includes ITV’s “Marple” adaptations. And W[delta]Z gives the distinct impression, in tone and dialogue, that it’s an English attempt to carry off an American TV crime show – to the extent that, having forgotten what it was about before it started, and having convinced myself that it was a British gangster flick, it was some time before I realised that it was meant to be set in a (never fully defined) American city. (Why bother making it American? Is it because it would too obviously be a Silent Witness/Wire in the Blood rehash?)
To be honest, I’m not even particularly bitter about it – I was beginning to worry that I was being too easy on the films I’ve seen so far, or that Hollywood blockbuster season had rotten my critical faculties, so it’s nice to have something to lay into…
I saw:
- 20/08/07, 7.20pm: W[delta]Z (Cineworld 2)
comment: