This is a psychological thriller that uses drawing skills to hide the way of the crime. The murderer skillfully uses perspective rules to design two complete paintings on a separate canvas, and the two detectives' pursuit will also start from this painting. Stan is a seasoned police detective who is sent to investigate A serial killer. In terms of modus operandi, the serial killer is very similar to the criminals in a case that Stein approached in 2002. As the investigation continues, partner kael begins to suspect that Stan seems to be hiding something when he handles that case.
In order to understand this movie, you must have a certain amount of artistic cultivation and understanding. First, a murder case in 2002 that was suspected of imitating the picture of a famous novel. The protagonist (the police) used a young woman as bait in order to achieve the purpose of attracting snakes out of their holes. , but unfortunately he was a step too late, the girl had been killed, and then the police found a suspect, but because he accidentally shot the suspect during the arrest, everyone thought that the case had been closed, the killer has been killed.
But the case is not over. In the following cases, the victims were placed as works of art, but there was no clear connection between each image. And the case has always been considered to imitate the work of a certain painter, but it is not known which painter.
Then one day a person reminded the police detective, taking the Pope's serious and realistic painting as an example, and then another artist created some crazy abstract paintings based on this painting, and the expressions of the characters became more and more terrifying. This shows that the artist will transform the original invisible brutality from the drawing paper to the madness of killing in reality.
In the end, the protagonist's colleagues discovered that all the murderer's crime scenes are related from different angles: in the first picture of the hanging man, there is a reminder of the second bird made of limbs; In the second painting of a bird made of limbs, there is a hint of a third human face; in the third painting of a human face, there is a hint of finding the door of the murderer's building. When the protagonist came into the building, he saw that his female friend had died. From the perspective of the murderer's prompt, he saw the prompt of three different angles of the screen when he died. In the end, before the protagonist died, the murderer's hint was confirmed, and three different angles of his death appeared.
Seeing this, I feel a little bit of Buddhist meditation: everything in the world has cause and effect, and everything seems to have been arranged in the dark, and finally formed a cycle.
The director seems to only want to show this "artistic" crime technique, but it is better to simply say that the entire storyline is unclear and puzzling about the cause of the crime and the process of solving the case, and he has lost the interest in interpreting the mystery. William James Dafoe 's performance is slightly disappointing
William James Dafoe is a great actor and one of the best "green leaves" in the entertainment industry. The films he starred in have always been good. From alternative interpretations of The Last Temptation of Christ to Madonna Louise Ciccone 's Body of Evidence , teacher role in Pavilion of Women . Maybe not so classic. But enough to make an impression.
A film as puzzling and inexplicable as surreal art, the director may have racked his brains on the conception of crime art, the splendid and strange criminal modus operandi and its immortal artistic value are comparable to " The Seven Deadly Sins" and "The Cell" , so when the plot was framed, it became ill from overwork and a thousand miles away. The basic elements of the so-called cause and effect and the relationship between the upper and lower are not well done. The causal association between the murderer, the victim and the protagonist is also forcibly indoctrinated and anticlimactic. The huge gap between the suspected complexity of the plot and the simplicity of the essence will even make you suspect that you are mentally disabled, the only one. The takeaway is the "Anamorph" perspective. And William James Dafoe put on the face of an uncle, and he was unsmiling from beginning to end. It is not that his acting skills are dull, but that the plot simply did not design reasonable, feasible and traceable psychological activities for any characters.
There are still some omissions and flaws in the film. For example, the account of what happened in 2002 is too vague. In addition, there is a street pursuit of the real murderer. It is very unreasonable. There was absolutely no reason to appear behind him at that time and blatantly stalk him and later turned into being chased by him. The result was nothing.
The director focuses on the performance of criminal techniques, but the criminal psychology and the criminal process are too thin! I still do not understand what is the motive for the crime? The director showed us the painting technique of "distortionism" with great interest, which I think is the biggest gain of watching this movie.
