Wednesday, May 13, 2015

The Two Faces of January 2014


The Two Faces of January


     This film is based on a 1964 novel by Patricia Highsmith.  The setting is 1962 in Athens, Greece.  Chester MacFarland and his younger wife Colette are sightseeing.  They meet Rydal and he is a Greek-speaking American.  He offers to be their tour guide but what they don’t know is he is scamming tourists on the side.  Colette is beautiful and Chester is wealthy and charming.  Rydal is attracted to Colette and impressed by Chester.  What Rydal doesn’t know is everything is not what is seems.  Chester is lying about himself and Rydal is doing the same thing.  Chester becomes filled with jealousy and paranoia resulting in extreme tenseness over Rydal and Colette.
     There are three things I don’t like about this movie, the pretentiousness of the men, the lying of the men and the very slow plodding pace of the action.  I’m not sure I could call it ‘action?’  It requires intense patience to see this though to the end!!  I had been looking forward to seeing this film from watching the trailer but I found it to be a disappointment.  2 1/2* (This movie is so-so)

96 min, Thriller directed by Hossein Amini with Kirsten Dunst, Oscar Isaac, Viggo Mortensen, Daisy Bevan, David Warshofsky, Yigit Ozsener, Karayianni Margaux, Prometheus Aleifer, Socrates Alafouzos.

Note:  Imdb 6.2 out of 10, 82% critic 48% audience, Roger Ebert 3*.
Special Note:  Patricia Highsmith created Tom Ripley featured as a character in The Talented Mr. Ripley and she provided the source material for Strangers on the Train to Alfred Hitchcock.  







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