BEFORE: Today's film is the Christian Bale movie that I skipped back in April - because it looked like it would perform a valuable service in May, connecting Mother's Day with Memorial Day. Now, of course, it looks like there are other ways I could have done that, but this is the one I chose, so I'm going to roll with it.
Hadley Robinson carries over from "Moxie".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Raven" (2012) (Movie #1,434)
THE PLOT: A world-weary detective is hired to investigate the murder of a West Point cadet. Stymied by the cadets' code of silence, he enlists one of their own to help unravel the case - a young man the world would come to know as Edgar Allan Poe.
AFTER: Of course, I have my favorite authors - if you tell me that there's a documentary about Kurt Vonnegut, you'd better believe I'm going to work that into the chain, ASAP. Same goes if you tell me there's a murder mystery with Edgar Allan Poe as a character. Where is that playing? If it's in a theater, here, please take my money. Wait, it's on Netflix? OK, how soon can I work it into my mix? Hence the initial programming of this film into the April Christian Bale-a-Thon, it nearly broke my (tell-tale) heart to have to delay this one a full month, just because it was going to be an essential link between Mother's Day and Memorial Day films. OK, I've waited three months to watch this, I can wait a little longer...
Well, after all that wait, maybe my expectations were a bit too high, because I sure wish this were a better film. It's too long, for starters, and then if you calculate velocity over time you'll probably realize that it moves too slowly as well. There are MAYBE five key reveals of information along the way, and I think I'm actually over-estimating, but that means that these five key pieces to the puzzle get doled out every 25 minutes or so, and that's just not soon enough. I probably dozed off at least twice, and that's just not a good sign.
BUT, and there's a pretty big BUT here, those five bits of information, those five reveals, are big big BIG doozers. Without giving anything away, I think I can safely say that the last one is the biggest, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen a reveal like that in any murder mystery before. It's not quite a "Fight Club" or "Sixth Sense" level reveal, but it does change everything that went before. This might be worth watching a second time after you hit that ending, just to see if you missed anything along the way. But I will say no more about it. This is still a spoiler-free zone, but I just read something the other day about how the current generation of movie fans, at least some of them, don't mind reading about the ending of a film online before seeing it. Me, not so much. First time through a movie should always be as cold and clueless as possible. Curse the people who edit trailers and just can't resist giving away the best bits...
This mystery unfolds in 1830, as Augustus Landor, a retired detective who happens to live in a cabin near West Point Military Academy in upstate New York, is called to the U.S.M.A. to investigate a murder - as an impartial expert, apparently the Academy doesn't have anyone on staff accustomed to investigating such matters from a forensic P.O.V. A cadet was found hanged, with his heart removed from his body, that and the other evidence would indicate that he did not commit suicide, but was most likely murdered. Landor finds that there is something of a code of silence among the military men, they're not likely to talk to an outsider, so he enlists another cadet, one with an interest in poetry and mysteries, a youngish master E.A. Poe.
The only clue is a scrap of paper in the dead man's hand, but then a cow and sheep are found in butchered nearby, also with their hearts removed, and then, sure enough, another cadet goes missing and is found hanged as well. The investigation soon focuses on Dr. Marquis, who performed the autopsy on the first killed cadet, and his adult son and daughter, Lea, who suffers from frequent seizures. Poe becomes enamored of Lea and quite possibly the movie here is suggesting that she might represent the inspiration of the "Lenore" mentioned in his poem "The Raven".
Ah, I really liked where this one seemed to be going - because Poe is generally regarded as the creator of the first detective story ("The Goldbug") and the first murder mystery ("Murders in the Rue Morgue") and you've got to wonder what first inspired him to write these, like how does one not just write a story, but also invent an entire GENRE of story at the same time? Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are to sci-fi what Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley are to monster stories, and that's what Poe was to mystery fiction. What events in his life did he draw from to create the mystery genre? This film is as good a guess as any, I suppose - but I think I'm overdue for a re-watch of the 2012 film "The Raven", I only watched it once, and that was 10 years ago, so I've forgotten everything about it by now.
There's another thematic element that carries over from "Moxie", believe it or not, but again, no spoilers here. Let's just say it's got something to do with Landor's absent daughter. I was worried I was jumping around too much in time and theme, but some things are universal, including man's inhumanity to man. Umm, to woman, I should say. Yeah, stick with this one to the end if you can, though it drags quite a bit and there are more than a few red herrings along the way, the end just might be worth the trouble of getting there. But, as always, your mileage may vary.
Also starring Christian Bale (last seen in "Equilibrium"), Harry Melling (last seen in "The Devil All the Time"), Simon McBurney (last seen in "The Reckoning"), Timothy Spall (last seen in "Secrets & Lies"), Toby Jones (last seen in "The Wonder"), Harry Lawtey, Fred Hechinger (last seen in "Human Capital"), Joey Brooks (last seen in "Molly's Game"), Charlotte Gainsbourg (last seen in "Norman"), Lucy Boynton (last seen in "Locked Down"), Robert Duvall (last seen in "Hustle"), Gillian Anderson (last seen in "The Spy Who Dumped Me"), Steven Maier, Brennan Keel Cook, Orlagh Cassidy (last seen in "Shirley"), Scott Anderson (last seen in "The Informer"), Gideon Glick (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Jack Irving, Matt Helm (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Mathias Goldstein, Charlie Tahan (last seen in "Life of Crime"), Bill Cwikowski (last seen in "Manhunter"), Agnes Herrmann (last seen in "The Road"), Nicolas Bellavia, with a cameo from John Fetterman.
RATING: 7 out of 10 books about the occult
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