roboy3
It is hard to see how anyone could trash this film on the criteria of craft. It is a very well made film that understands its genre and goes beyond it. In terms of generic revisionism, this film goes beyond the genre by structuring within the plot a woman trying to compete in a man's world: the detective charged with catching the serial killer. Layered onto that is the role of technology in creating a surveillance culture. Carefully plotted so that the viewer will suspect the wrong person for half the film, it creates a complex investigation, not into personal psychology, but into contemporary society: university culture, techno-pop and music culture, cop culture, and patriarchal culture.Ironically enough, such a sustained examination of these cultural cross-currents do not anchor the film into Italy specifically--something that is exceedingly rare for an Italian film. This plot could have been just as easily set in Kracow, Oxford, Munich, Ann Arbor, or Berkeley.It is compelling, complex, and well crafted. Tension builds, is dispersed, and builds again, only to have a twist throw it off yet again. Complaining about it generically is not only off-base, but the equivalent to complaining that every western has horses in it.
ramsri81
One thing I need to inform before penning down the comment is that I may have made a mistake comparing this movie with all the known gore thrillers so might not have got the deserved rating. Now a Italian town has a serial killer and he is a wacko. He is killing people. Well when you read the movie's summary from critics you may feel the movie is really special, but it ain't. Its a decent cop thriller with a serial killer. There was something bothering me through out the movie. I watched this one after "THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE" which was far superior in comparison. The movie lacked a certain tension or zest if you like to call for the crimes which would be committed by the supposed re-incarnation minded psycho. It was gore soaked (which was good by the way) but other wise nothing out of the ordinary. I generally look out of Hollywood to get good slasher thrillers and this one wasn't that. But I think the director can make a good tight slasher thriller by taking the good points out of this experimental one.My rating 7/10P.S: There was not even one breast shot of the lead detective.Why do you people make movies any more???
Pierre Lacroix
A straight thriller with everything it needs. Just like other great directors, Alex Infascelli has taken good ideas and inspirations from other movies and brought them here together. And so this film has one great moment after another just a wonderful mixture of awesome film citations becoming a particular thriller. The performance of the director and the director of photography is great. You do not see every day that kind of style, that kind of camera angles, you're just feeling like an observer. I do not understand why other directors do not have that courage to try new looks like that. In the end, I think so, we watch movies from young directors to see new things, not that kind of camera and performance that you have seen lots of times before.
Gastel
The 99% of thriller/horror movies are based on this assumption: people are stupid. Only in this way we can explain the ridiculous plot and naive subject that the majority of this kind of movies have. A few examples are: The Bone collector, The Crimson Rivers, The Cell and, obviously, Almost Blue. Common 'features' of these movies are: - They want to be psychological thrillers. It's a pity that the psychological aspect of the killer seems written by a five years old children. - They want to be 'belivable' but I think that an episode of The Simpsons is much more realistic. There's always a super-policeman/fbi agent that seems to have the control of all the police department. He/she knows every single move of the killer...but always 2 minutes later. There's ALWAYS someone that can help the 'hero' to get the killer but doing this he/she risks his/her own life... They are all the same! - They want to scare the audience. The problem here is that after the first 5 minutes you are able to predict EXACTLY how the story will end.Almost Blue has all the above features and much more :) The only good thing about this movie are the last 2 minutes...the final scene is somewhat poetic but, unfortunately, it can't save Almost Blue from being a really mediocre movie...
AD
