Good concept, poorly executed.

Excellent adaptation.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Very ironic that it was based on a novel called "The Blunderer" as it was a mess at every turn.I'm guessing but being that they somehow had the authentic locales, wardrobe and the shockingly numerous vehicles of the times, tried to build a movie around those. Or just didn't care about anything else. Even that failed as there were countless wide shots that should have been nice but just didn't work. The broad strokes were the actual direction that only essentially employed wide shots of interactions between characters with very few close-ups when close-ups are what these "noirs" rely on most. A vast majority of the dialogue and plot were delivered in a matter-of- fact way that completely ignored subtleties and nuances. Eddie Marsan and Vincent Kartheiser at least made a half-hearted attempt to act while the rest of the cast and leads essentially walked through the piece.(Being that the whole thing was delivered in a very flat manner and the prevalence of foreign money in films, I have to speculate that had an influence as some foreign films have that kind of storytelling. Further research showed it had Japanese, Philippine, Singapore, Middle Eastern and German money behind it. But there was a very stark example of such in a movie called Child of God by James Franco and had a prevalent Chinese company, Well-Go USA, behind it. It, too, was a period piece in the 50s South but extremely esoteric and the last thing you'd think Chinese audience would relate to. And of course the obvious Marvel and Transformers films.)Even the snow was bad as it often had a snow effect but none to very little snow on the ground. Jumping to the end, it also ignored the tried and true rule about this genre. The killer is always the one you least expect. But no, it was the first person you expected and was completely devoid of being clever. And it never answered the question about the Biel's death. I GUESS it was suicide although never clarified such. We are introduced to Wilson's eventual love interest Bennett in a completely non-dramatic way. He is not shown to be smitten or awestruck. She just---appears. They have a conversation and she leaves. Biel is jealous.And then the rest was just sloppy nonsense. We see the killer obviously set up an alibi by making himself known to the kid in the movie theater. He then leaves and it looks like he's up to no good. In all but this movie, that turns out to be a red herring. But here? No. He is actually the bumbling killer who ended up murdering his wife in a very sloppy and public way. Then we see a few scenes where the killer and the kid seem to have some sort of arrangement or agreement about all this. In vague terms, the kid is on the killer's side. But does he know the killer is actually the killer? Just bumbling nonsense.Bennett then shows with the potted planet and seems to flirt with an uninterested Wilson, who then shows up at her singing gig. It's at THAT point that we see he is smitten. For a very long time we do not see either Wilson or Bennett together whatsoever. No reason to think anything has happened. Biel insists that she followed her husband to Bennett's apartment. (In what? They have one car. She took the bus to her mother's house.) I got the impression that she was just crazy as we the audience did not see any further interaction between the two.But no. That did in fact happen as we find out much later in flashback.Wilson follows Biel on the bus and loses her somehow and we are never told how. He quickly makes himself known to a witness but lies about it to the detective later. Even though the detective easily finds out Wilson is lying, Wilson continues to lie (about the bookseller/murderer) coupled with being very obvious about his new girlfriend and telling everything to his supposed best friend.And where did Bennett hide in Wilson's house when the detective showed up?Frustrated and at the end of his rope, the detective then somehow enrages the killer with a feeble argument about class-ism so the killer then can go after Wilson. Sure enough, the killer does that and, for some reason, chases Wilson out of a very public bar and into the shadowy catacombs that were apparently adjacent and very accessible to this bar. Police of course close on their tails.A little point about wearing glasses, which the killer did. The cop crushed the glasses under his foot (off-camera) and the killer was without his coke bottle specs. But this didn't seem to slow him down one bit. Anybody who wears glasses would call BS on this one.Miss it. Don't waste your time unless you like laughing at bad film making.

In the bonus segment of the DVD for "A Kind of Murder," the director Andy Goddard describes his goal of filming a psychological thriller. Unfortunately, the results of his efforts were not terribly exciting.One of the problems of the film is that the script was based on one of the inferior works of the writer Patricia Highsmith, whose strength was typically in the area of psychological crime fiction. The film develops parallel murder stories with two men, Mr. Stackhouse and Mr. Kimmel, who engage in a cat-and-mouse game with each other.Either Stackhouse or Kimmel (or both...or neither) could actually have murdered their wives. The most engaging part of the film was the proposition in Stackhouse's mind that he was guilty of his wife's death merely because he secretly desired it. This psychological concept was brilliantly developed by Dostoevsky in his masterpiece "The Brothers Karamazov." But Highsmith's presentation lacks depth and truly profound psychological insights.The cast of "A Kind of Murder" was excellent with Patrick Wilson, Jessica Biel, Eddit Marsan, and Haley Bennett. Bennett was good in her role as a torch song performer in a moody underground nightclub. The design team effectively captured the period of the '60s, and the film was well scored. Unfortunately, the overall effect was just not very compelling.

It could have been a really great movie but it just lets you down over and over again. I get the whole 60's era, rainy/snowy nights but it's all about the scenery and nothing about the characters. I never understood the bullying behavior of the Detective, the "illness" of the wife or what exactly the Husband did. Was he a Writer or an Architect? Too many unanswered questions and not enough acting, but you get plenty of night-time scenery. I guess my biggest disappointment is the Damn plot or story line, I'm still confused.

it should be good if it was 60 years ago it can be damn good if it was 80 years ago But today in 2017.. it for nothing.very good acting decoration, costumes. love those cars(unfortunately, can't afford most of them in 2017))). music look like just stolen from old movies BUT IMHO John Woo can make such movie with all fact included in 4 seconds))) it's another internet generation and when you make such movie most watchers feel that you stole at list 1:30 hr from 1:35:29