Director: David Fincher
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Edwards
Have I Seen It Before: Maybe? Probably not.
Did I Like It: This might represent the last sustained moment of the movies before the Marvel universe took over everything. Downey in this film is practically vibrating in anticipation of leaping beyond his troubles (and more his years as an indie/and into full-moviestardom. There’s even a measure of what he brings to Tony Stark within his portrayal of newspaperman Paul Avery. Although that’s probably a very long way for me to say that there is a certain amount of sameness in the roles Downey has picked in the last twenty years, give or take a Nolan film*.
But, I can only guess that providing what many would call the last gasp of the mainstream prestige film** probably not what Fincher set out to do.
So many post-modern thrillers/horror films think they can reckon with the violence of their genre by either cynical detachment (Scream (1996) and its various sequels and imitators) or by doubling down on an unearned earnestness (David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018)*** and its sequels), but Fincher is able to just confront the violence as it likely happened. Getting shot or stabbed is a very unpleasant fate, and I’m not entirely sure why it took until the mid-aughts to bring that element into a thriller. Even Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) tried to make it a little fun.
But what I really think about as I watch this film? They pretty much figured out that John Carroll Lynch did it, there’s a whole extra hour of stuff going on before it pretty much was clear that John Carrolll Lynch did it.
*I guess the ball’s in your court, Doomsday.
**Maybe an exaggeration, although one might have trouble figuring that out if they ever expose themselves to film discourse on the internet.
***Which I still like, and you can just deal with that. Thanks.