Starring Adrian Brody,Emmanuelle Seigner,Elsa Pataky
Dario Argento, though not the first to make a giallo, his name is synonymous with the sub genre since the release of his feature film Four Flies on Gray Velvet. But from the look of this it seems Argento has forgotten what a giallo is. Lacking in mystery, an unknown killer's identity and sexual perversions this comes across more like a made for television movie of the week, and this particular week is uneventful.
The writing is sloppy, lazy and on numerous occasions down right preposterous. , Jim Agnew and Sean Keller are credited as writers here.Argento is credited as co - writer.
Linda,(Seigner )a flight attendant is staying over in Torino to visit her beautiful sister Celine,(Pataky) a fashion model. When Celine fails to arrive at her apartment, the awaiting Linda becomes suspicious. Her last source of communication was by cell phone, Celine said she would be there shortly, she was in a taxi.
Taking this information to the police, Linda is told to go to the basement of the station to see inspector Enzo Avolfi ( Brody ). Giving Avolfi the information,he claims this sounds like a case he has been working on. Beautiful young women who are also tourists are terribly mutilated, tortured, killed and left at various places around the city. One such victim who amazingly stays alive long enough to allow Alvofi to record her last words and clue him into the word yellow in Japanese. The ironic thing about Giallo is that the movie isn't a giallo, we know right away who the killer is, we see his face, unlike the traditional giallo where the killer's identity would be explained just before the credits roll.There is also the lack of sexual perversions that are usually associated with the giallo genre, the killer here is happy mutilating beautiful women, due to his ugliness. He feels better towards himself after doing this to their beautiful faces. There are a couple of moments of gore such as lips and a finger cut off by tin snips, sometimes the camera will linger while at other times Argento will let us use our imaginations.
The character of Enzo Avolfi lives and works in the basement of the police station , he uses very unorthodox methods,so we are told. Other than chain smoking and mumbling, I didn't see any methods that were different or unorthodox. Surrounding his office/ home with pictures of mutilated victims from his recent case, Avolfi seems at ease here, in a very cliche manner now, a pizza is even delivered.
In flashbacks we see that both the killer and inspector Avolfi have had mother issues. One character is witness to his mother's murder while the other is left abandoned at a Catholic church by his drug dependant, prostitute mother, passing on her Hepatitis C and causing the skin condition of jaundice.
If one was to juxtapose the antagonist and the protagonist, other similarities would be revealed. Even the casting of Byron Diedra can be seen as a hint. It is an anagram for Adrian Brody.
One example of the writing where I found it to be rather silly was when the character of Enzo Avolfi knows that the tourists have last been seen alive entering taxi cabs, but when Linda is found following him in a cab, he insists that she get back into the cab and leave so that he can continue with the investigation. Searching for your abducted sister by a crazed killer can make one turn desperate, but I found it absurd how easily Linda had become convinced to co-operate with the killer.
I thought the ending was purely a cop out, again looking like the movie of the week,even the end credits looking very much like a T.V. movie.
My Thoughts: Dario Argento has given us his fair share of cinematic greatness, unfortunately in the last couple of years, I have been a little disappointed in what he has to offer. But he is still the one that brought us Suspiria, so I will continue to watch whatever he may capture on camera.
My Rating: 2 Go Go Girls out of 5
