Suspect
Zero
(Widescreen)
Picture: B
Sound: B Extras: B- Film: B-
It has been four long years since E. Elias Merhige put
anything on the screen after his semi-overlooked, and by now, forgotten film Shadow of the Vampire, which is why Suspect Zero prompted a few eyebrows to
raise. What Shadow of the Vampire proved as that this was a director needed to
be taken serious, at least he could make an intelligent film by still using
other source material, the most obvious being F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu. Shadow went the extra
mile though to be comical at times and never take itself too seriously, but
that is not the subject of this review, rather his latest film is, so without
too much digression I shall presume.
Suspect
Zero has just about everything going for it: good cast with
the likes of Ben Kingsley, Aaron Eckhart, and Carrie-Anne Moss, it also has
Scorsese old faithful cameraman Michael Chapman (Raging Bull, Last Waltz,
Taxi Driver), but the script is the
work of Zak Penn, which is probably where the weakest link lies. Penn, recently turned director with another
bomb called Incident at Loch Ness
(reviewed on this site) has put together a few decent scripts in the past few
years, but it was evident here that he had David Fincher’s Se7en on the brain. You
can’t help but think while you are watching this that you are seeing another
version of that film. The plot is so
similar in that a serial killer is out killing other serial killers, so instead
of them just being ‘bad people’ that have committed the seven deadly sins, they
are mostly murderers.
Kingsley plays one of his bolder roles and if you thought
he was deranged in Sexy Beast, or a
bit implosive in House of Sand and Fog, or even if you remember the superb role
he gave in Polanski’s Death and the
Maiden you will be shocked again at his versatility here. For the most part he holds the picture
together and supporting that is Carrie-Anne Moss, who gives probably her best
performance aside from Memento. Aaron Eckhart is slightly emerging as a
semi-decent actor and if he picks slightly less cardboard characters to play he
might become involved in better films, but we shall see.
Paramount is attempting to catch up on some of the loss
the film suffered with little box office business. Part of that was lack of proper advertising, but the DVD should
help since it has a cast that will attract some attention and extras that will
make some consumers tilt for the purchase.
Thrillers and horror movies are always solid renters as well, so
Paramount has that on their side as well.
The DVD maintains their standards with a anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X
1 aspect ratio, which is slightly modified from the intended 1.66 X 1 shot
ratio, which means picture information is probably cropped from top and bottom. Also note that this film has a variety for
film formats including film and video, plus 8mm, 16mm, and 35mm being used
along the way. While the sizes and
formats change the transfer does remain solid throughout and only loses quality
when it is intentional for artistic purposes.
Sound design is quite good for the film; unfortunately
Paramount is still doing Dolby Digital 5.1 for almost all of their releases
despite how great they do DTS when they actually do it such as the case with Star Trek First Contact, reviewed on
this site as well. This film would have
benefited greatly from that, as did Shadow
of the Vampire, released through Universal back when they were doing DTS
and Dolby very common together. Instead
we get a fairly weak overall presentation that is hardly impressive, which
makes me wonder if it could have been more thrilling if the soundstage would
have been more immersive in DTS? We may
never know.
Extras are on the better side though with a really good
commentary track from the director himself, who I found to be more interesting
to listen to than I had expected. His
comments are very knowledgeable and insightful and he still has great potential
as a prominent filmmaker. There are
also nearly 10 minutes of previews before the menu appears that you can bypass,
but this leads me to believe that more companies are trying to insult the
consumer with more marketing than we need.
There is a 4-part featurette that is interesting if you enjoy the film,
but otherwise you probably won’t care much.
The film does contain an alternate ending, which has an optional
commentary by the director to see why he chose to use the ending that was
used. I think the right choice was made
for the final film cut, but you can make that decision yourself what you like
best.
Another odd extra that appears is called ‘remote viewing
demonstration’, which I don’t even know how to really explain in a sensible way
other than to say it’s sorta like telekinesis and that it’s worth a look. That really doesn’t help describe it, but
then again the more you try to explain it the more complicated it becomes.
I am always glad to see a studio like Paramount stick to
their guns when it comes to supporting smaller films, as well as good DVD
releases when that times comes. Suspect Zero is not going to knock
anyone away and is a solid rental title, which may also garner a few hardcore
thriller fans to go the extra mile of purchase. If that is the case they will have a decent extra-laden DVD, with
average picture and sound, which could have been a better selling point if it
were DTS. Really what that spells out
is that if you have an average film and you are pushing for sales it either
needs to have killer extras or an awesome demonstration quality picture and
sound package.
- Nate Goss
