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Category:    Home > Reviews > Thriller > Suspect Zero (Widescreen)

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


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