Wow! Such a good movie.

Sick Product of a Sick System

From my favorite movies..

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Yes, Harvey Keitel is in this. Yes, he gets naked.Yes, Emmanuelle Beart is in this. Yes, she gets naked.Yes, this is a European production of an American crime drama. Yes, it sucks.A Crime attempts to weld together a U-S style psychological thriller, complete with a couple of "big" twists that anyone can see coming, with a existentialist examination of love and obsession right out of French cinema. Maybe that's not such a bad idea but this movie is the worst of all possible worlds. It's as boring and pretentious as any art house Euro flick while also being as vacuous and preposterous as any other piece of crap that gets cobbled together in the States. As a general rule, I try to watch a movie straight through no matter how bad it is. It's the best way to capture the full effect and it's only fair to the folks who made it. Every so often, though, I run into a motion picture where I can't stand it. I have to stop the film at some point, get up out of my chair and shake off the despair and ennui. A Crime is one of those movies.Vincent Harris (Norman Reedus) is a man whose wife was murdered 3 years ago and the only lead is the taxi he saw leaving their home, a gash in the side and the driver wearing a red jacket and a big, shiny ring. Now, Vincent lives in a Brooklyn apartment and races his pet greyhound that never wins. Alice Parker (Emmanuelle Beart) is Vincent's neighbor, a frequent drunk who's desperately in love with him. Or at least some desperate approximation of what she thinks love is. Vincent is fixated on finding his wife's killer. We know that because Alice and a police detective (Joe Grifasi) specifically describe Vincent in those terms. For his part, Vincent doesn't do anything to justify that description until the film is almost halfway over and then he doesn't appear to be fixated. He acts like he's utterly off his rocker, but I guess the filmmakers realized they had to do something to demonstrate Vincent's alleged obsession or the 2nd half of the movie would make no sense at all.Convinced that Vincent will never be her's until he locates his wife's murderer, Alice heads out and seduces a cabbie named Roger Culkin (Harvey Keitel). She beds him, gets him to fall off the AA wagon, puts a gash in the side of his cab and has him don a red jacket and a big, shiny ring. Then she pushes Roger and Vincent together and…bingo!So, to sum up, at this point in A Crime, we've got a pathetic wretch who manipulates a crazy guy into killing another guy who has a headband and a boomerang. Oh, yeah. I forgot that Roger Culkin has a headband and a boomerang. It wouldn't normally be a big deal but those two things pretty much define his entire character.It turns out that Alice's scheme works and she and Vincent wind up in each other's arms. Then Roger resurfaces and although I sorely hoped that he was a ghost or Alice's hallucination, he's real and his brush with death turned him into some sort of taxi cab supercriminal who exists outside the law. He demands Alice run away with him or he'll turn Vincent in as an attempted murderer. But then it turns out that Roger was the guy who killed Vincent's wife after all and Alice slays him after Roger suddenly turns into the dumbest man alive. Vincent and Alice reunite, only for Vincent to discover what Alice had done, and they both lived happily ever after. Or at least that's what I got out of the ending.There's a frickin' cornucopia of things wrong with A Crime. It's slow. It has no energy or rhythm. Vincent and Alice are barely two dimensional. It's too long. Both of the twists involving Roger can be seen coming a mile away. It's too quiet. The success of Alice's scheme is so improbable that I at first thought it was evidence that the film's POV had shifted to her delusional perspective. Too much time is spent on Alice and Roger's contrived bar conversations. A headband and a boomerang!What A Crime smells like is some arrogant Euro effort to class up an American genre flick that founders on a poor grasp of genre mechanics and a lack of interest in any of the characters as human beings. It is dreary and dreadful and if you can view the whole thing in a single sitting, then you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. For all us lesser folk, skip this loser.

I'm going to admit straight off of the bat that the only reason I watched this film was because I'm a huge Norman Reedus fan. I'm also going to immediately admit that the only reason I continued watching this film once I got past the half hour point was also because of Norman Reedus.The plot of the film has plenty of potential and, perhaps in another director's hands, could have been a thrilling, emotional drama. What we actually receive, however, is a film sorely lacking in emotion and character development. This applies to the plot as well; the murder of Vincent's wife, which should have felt like the driving force of the story, was really more like a brief point. In addition, the entire movie seems to be lacking in motivation; many aspects that could have been explored further are left unexplained or simply ignored. I also had to suspend realism at a number of points, especially regarding Alice's seduction of Roger basically happening in one night.Of all the characters, Alice's was most underdeveloped and it almost feels like the writers didn't even make an attempt to make her likable. Indeed, over the course of the film, the only things I truly felt towards her were anger and childish annoyance. This is a role that could have been written much, much better and that improvement alone most likely would have changed the entire film. Every movie does have a highlight, however, and the highlight of A Crime happens to be the acting of Norman Reedus and Harvey Keitel. The latter gives a quietly menacing, slightly creepy performance as cab driver Roger and Norman, although underutilized, plays his role to the best of his ability.Overall, if you're a Norman Reedus or Harvey Keitel fan, or are extremely bored on a weekend, give the film a try. Otherwise, there are much better 'noir' films that you could view.

Although this was an intriguing film and Mr. Keitel is always a pleasure to watch, the screenplay left me disappointed. In the first place, all the husband did was glimpse a taxi passing him in the opposite direction and from that deduced that the taxi driver killed his wife. No motive, no explanation. We just see her dead body and leap ahead three years to see the man obsessed with his wife's murder. For no reason that I can ascertain, even the cops take it for granted that the taxi driver was the culprit; all this based upon one brief glance of a speeding taxi. We (the viewers) didn't even get a good look, but the husband managed to note a long gash in the driver's door, a large ring on the driver's hand and a red jacket the driver was wearing. Now we're expected to believe that three years later the murderer is still driving around in his taxi with his red jacket and big ring. In the end, a broke and homeless taxi driver and a broke woman suddenly have a nice vehicle to drive and in it she finds a large ring which presumably tells us that after all, this man is actually the taxi driver who murdered a woman three years earlier. If I were a cop, she and the writer are the only culprits I'd throw in jail.

While returning home after fixing the lights of a billboard, the worker Vincent Harris (Norman Reedus) passes by a taxi with a damage of about 2 x 45 cm on the door. When Vincent arrives home, he finds his wife murdered on the floor of the living room. He claims that the driver was wearing a red jacket and a ring with a large stone. Three years later, he lives in Brooklyn but is still chasing the killer of his wife. His dysfunctional neighbor Alice Parker (Emmanuelle Béart) has a crush on him, but Vincent is haunted by the ghosts of his past. When Alice meets the cab driver Roger Culkin (Harvey Keitel) out of the blue, she seduces him, damages his taxi and gives a red jacked and a ring to him. Then she forces him to meet Vincent, inventing a culprit to release Vincent from his past and stay with her."A Crime" is a weird but original movie, supported by the magnificent Emmanuelle Béart in the role of a fatal woman. The story is unusual and follows the style of a film-noir, and the mysterious character performed by Emmanuelle Béart is one of the most manipulative I have ever seen, using her sexy body to create an illusional relationship with the tough taxi driver Roger Culkin to achieve her ultimate objective. The movie has erotic scenes performed by Emmanuelle Béart and Harvey Keitel and I liked it. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "O Crime" ("The Crime")