Matthew Stechel Peter Boyle stars as a cop dressed in a very bright blue suit who is convinced that this murder he is assigned to investigate is the work of this elaborate conspiracy. The murder is of an older Torah scholar rabbinical student who is convinced he found the 9th name of God (or was it the 10th?) and while Boyle's partner (dressed in a very Dick Tracey like bright yellow suit) whom while also serving as the film's narrator is quite happy to write off the murder as a random break-in/wrong time-wrong place type of case.Boyle becomes more and more determined to prove that this murder is the work of this cabal of murderers desperate to keep the name secret and hidden. Boyle basically goes off the deep end here becoming increasingly stubborn in his urgent cries of conspiracy here. (At one point looking at a map of three seemingly unrelated murders--he draws a triangle connecting all three points, and then proceeds to draw another point and declares it a rhomboid, which the sheer force of him declaring that statement made me laugh quite a bit--"Its Not A Traingle, Its A Rhomboid!")He's aided by an article writer played by Christopher Eccleson (for the Hebrew press no less! some kind of newsletter specifically for the Orthodox) who is very interested in seeing where Boyle goes with his investigation, but also doesn't seem to think that there's anything here realistically, but he's not gonna let his own skepticism stand in the way of a potentially good story. If anything, he can at least write a news article about Boyle's determination to see this investigation thru despite the thinnest of leads beyond his own gut. This movie is not good by a long shot. (The case really never does actually amount to anything more than Peter Boyle being very fervent in his belief that it will lead to something, and even then its kind of hard to decipher his thought process so that it makes logical sense.) The movie to the director's credit is also never boring, and it never lags. To me the film sustained its interest level throughout, but its also the kind of movie you watch late at night on TV and the next day wonder if you had possibly fallen asleep watching it because some of the details of it are so bizarre, they couldn't have possibly been in the movie itself right? Surely, you must have fallen asleep at some point and are remembering bits of a dream you had while this was on in the back round. I having seen this in a theater can assure you that it was in fact the movie and not you.That said, for everything that was interesting about the movie (including a very unusual set design) the ending of it is fairly lousy, and I have no idea if that's a fault of the short story its based on, or if that's because writer/director Alex Cox didn't do enough to set it up beforehand. Oh well. Everything up to then was still engaging enough that i'd say if you like purposefully oddball detective movies, you could do worse than this. (It might make an interesting double bill with 1992's "The Plague" which based on an Albert Camus novel was similarly interesting an adaptation set in a third world nation but also somewhat disappointing as a whole)

JoeytheBrit Oh dear. I watched this one a week ago, and although there's no way it can be described as bland or unmemorable – although probably for all the wrong reasons – there's little about this adaptation of Borges' novel by Alex Cox that impressed me enough to make a lasting impression. Cox's style has always been… quirky, shall we say – and sometimes he's very good, but this one is an almighty mess that is only partly salvaged by Cox's customarily strong visual style. The story sprawls like spilled liquid with no confines to contain it. The acting borders on amateur dramatic level at times – which is unremarkable in a lot of cases, but not from the likes of Boyle and Eccleston – and the script is like something out of a DC comic book. Definitely a Marmite movie by the looks of it.

cadar1729 I liked Boyle's performance, but that's about the only positive thing I can say. Everything was overdone to the point of absurdity. Most of the actors spoke like you would expect your 9-year-old nephew to speak if he were pretending to be a jaded, stone-hearted cop, or an ultra-evil villain. The raspy voice-overs seemed amateurish to me. I could go buy a cheap synthesizer and crank out better opening music. And what's with the whole 1984ish police torture stuff? It was totally superfluous and had nothing to do with the actual events of the story. Cox added a lot of things, in fact, that he apparently thought would be really cool, but had nothing to do with the story. That's a big disappointment because one of the things that makes Borges' stories so good is his minimalism -- they are tightly bound, with no superfluous details. This movie is just the opposite. I stopped watching after the scene where Lonnrot is questioning the guy from the Yidische Zaitung, or thereabouts. I wasted $4 renting this, but at least I can get some satisfaction from writing this review and hopefully saving others from making the same mistake.

barfly99 As I write this only a few other people have ever voted for DEATH AND THE COMPASS, so I must assume that only a relatively tiny proportion of film-lovers have had the opportunity to watch this movie. Which is a shame, because it's an extremely good film. I actually only saw it myself by accident, as it were, at the London Film Festival three or four years ago after Alex Cox had entered it as a replacement for THE WINNER, which he had withdrawn, feeling it had been ruined by studio interference. And DEATH AND THE COMPASS is up there with his best work, at times surreal, but always clever and involving, and full of memorable sounds (that voice-over at the beginning!) and images (and what about those police cars!). Cox always casts great actors, and having Peter Boyle and Christopher Eccleston on board ensures the twisting story-line is enthralling right up to its quite stunning finale. Even if it gets the recognition it should, I don't think this will ever be prime time viewing material, but if quality counts for anything perhaps it should.