Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.14.12
Alfred Hitchcock was famous for
this trick.
Deranged Robert Walker, intended
to plant incriminating evidence — a cigarette lighter — to unjustly implicate
Farley Granger in a murder, accidently drops the item into a storm drain while
nearing the scene of the crime. We viewers should be delighted; if Walker loses
the lighter, then Granger triumphs: Good wins out over evil.
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| Increasingly troubled by irregularities in their company books, Brooke (Brit Marling) shares her concerns with her father (Richard Gere). But his efforts to reassure her ring hollow, forcing this intelligent young woman to wonder why he's being so evasive. What might he be hiding? |
And yet, perversely, as Walker
stuffs his arm through the grate during this climactic scene in Strangers on a
Train, his fingers not quite able to reach the lighter, we’re on the edge of
our seats ... wanting him to succeed.
In Frenzy, serial killer Barry
Foster disposes of his latest victim in a potato sack that is dumped into the
rear of a truck filled with such sacks. Shortly thereafter, Foster realizes
that his monogrammed stick pin, lost in the struggle, must be clasped in the
dead woman’s hand. Foster tears off after the truck, climbs inside and starts
pawing through burlap sacks.
We shouldn’t root for him;
failure means that the wholly innocent — but circumstantially accused — Jon
Finch will go free. But, again, we become emotionally invested in Foster’s
search, and feel relieved when he finds the body ... and calmly breaks her
fingers in order to retrieve the pin held tight in her fist.
In writer/director Nicholas
Jarecki’s richly nuanced Arbitrage, uber-wealthy New York hedge fund magnate
Robert Miller (Richard Gere) cheats on his wife, and has embezzled funds in
order to conceal a $420 million shortfall that would derail the sale of his
company to a bank. Just to dig the hole deeper, he flees the scene of a road
accident in order to evade responsibility.
Make no mistake: Miller is a bad
guy ... a smug, self-serving reprobate at best, and a conniving, soulless,
law-breaking bastard at worst. And still, almost against our wills, we cheer
him on, hoping that he’ll somehow keep all these tottering plates spinning, and
somehow extricate himself from this ever-widening disaster of his own creation.
Jarecki’s clever premise and
archly savvy script deserve considerable credit, as does Gere, giving the performance
of his often under-appreciated career. But he’s not the only person tearing up
the screen; solid supporting performances also are turned in by Susan Sarandon,
Brit Marling, Tim Roth and young Nate Parker.
