The Woman In The Window (2021) Watching this much-delayed, extra-troubled adaptation of the best selling thriller by A.J.Finn, we thought of a priceless line from the film version of Ira Levin's Broadway thriller "Deathtrap".
When a failed, jealous playwright played by Michael Caine salivates over a near perfect play written by novice student, his wife asks him, "Is it really that good?"
To which Caine sardonically replies, "It's so good, even a gifted director couldn't hurt it."
Not true in this case.
So maybe Joe Wright, the director of "The Darkest Hour", "Atonement" and "Anna Karenina" was too high-toned a choice to bring this popular Barnes And Noble page-turning"Rear Window " knockoff to the multiplex masses.
Not that there were any multiplex masses to be found in a global pandemic.....one of the many strokes of bad luck and bad timing that afflicted this movie on its long tortuous path to completion and public exhibition.
......which led it to its final resting place....Netflix.
Chances are, you've read or heard about the bad news backstory of the film's production......reshoots, re-edits, and orphaned into limbo when its studio, 20th Century Fox, was gobbled up by Disney. (And clearly Disney had no use for the film either....)
Now the big question. How much does this movie blow chunks? Is it really the trainwreck that some pop-culture nabobs would have you believe?
Our simple answer. Nah. Not even. It settles for....let's say tolerably okay. No question it could come out much better with a director who'd fully embrace its pulp-iest, most obvious thrills....(think David Fincher's direction of "Gone Girl")
In Joe Wright's direction and in the screenplay written by playwright Tracy Letts, we could detect their strenuous efforts to bring high art to this material, to raise it several cuts above a popcorn-munchin' fun time and forcibly yank it upwards into the higher clouds of cinema culture........
Sorry guys......at the end of the day, you're not making an Academy Award winner here.
You're making a movie about a screwed-up woman who sees a murder that no one believes happened because the only one who saw it is the screwed up woman. It's not rocket science....or "Anna Karenina 2".
Wright and Letts finally come to their senses, gettin' grisly when they arrive at movie's inevitable conclusion, when the revealed murderer goes into the expected "booga booga, I'm gonna kill ya" monologue before chasing the screwed up woman all over the place. (.....adhering to Stephen King's immortal commandment that sooner or later, you gotta drop the mask and go 'booga booga')
We can't fault the cast. Amy Adams gives it all she's got as the tormented, screwed up woman And Julienne Moore and Gary Oldman turn up wasting their valuable time and talent in roles that function only to service the plot twists.
Final verdict for us.....2 stars (**). Watchable if you're a fan of Adams or if you've read the book and curious enough to see how its very bumpy road to the screen came out......as we said....tolerably okay.
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