Dark Harbor
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Movie Reviews of Dark Harbor
Movie Review: Dark as the underside of a poisonous mushroom.....
Summary: 4 Stars
The first thing that attracted me to this film was that it starred Alan Rickman. Generally a character actor, Rickman has a reputation for stealing the limelight from the "stars" in his previous movies, i.e. "Sense and Sensibilities", "Truly,Madly,Deeply", "Quigley Down Under", and even "Die Hard".Until the next to the last scene, this film has only three characters, but I did not find it at all sparsely populated. These are big,strong characters whose personalities take up a lot of space,time, and energy. Rickman and Walker are a couple who never seem to finish the argument in which the movie opens. there is an uneasiness and lack of harmony between them throughout, yet they did not seem to nitpick, nor did i find them annoying. I sensed that they both would have gone on with their low-grade bickering forever until they stopped to help a young man, played by Norman Reedus, lying by the side of the road. From then on, I was certain that their lives had been altered, and NOT for the better. Despite that certainty, this is not a predictable film, nor is it a formulaic one. The acting is superb, the dialogue is real, the setting is perfect. To say that this is a dark movie is an understatement. It IS very dark, but in the best possible way. It is a labyrinth through which I was certain I had found my way until the very last scene. Unlike the Nick Nolte-Jessica Lange version of Cape Fear, it didn't matter whether I
liked the characters or not, but it DID matter what happened to them. I wanted to find out and I certainly DID find out.
This film was totally enjoyable and I consider it two hours well-spent.
Movie Review: A dark suspenseful thriller.
Summary: 4 Stars
First of all, I watched this mainly to see Alan Rickman. When I started watching the film, I have to admit, I almost didn't care for it. But as the story unfolded, so did the clues. This is a film that you would have to watch with NO DISTRACTIONS, because everything is a clue-from the husband demanding his wife help watch the road, the mushrooms, the husband's coffee (how did the drifter know how he took his coffee??), the drifter asking Alexis to write his thoughts for him and then sign it, etc. I then watched it with the commentary by Adam Coleman Howard, and gained more during his commentary than I have with other director's commentaries. I then watched the third time and found that I enjoyed the film. I feel that all the actors did a great job with these roles.
Speaking as a Rickman fan, I was totally shocked at the ending and during the second and third viewing I had to close my eyes after he goes up the hill from skinny dipping. It takes enormous talent for an actor to pull that scene off, but I found I still can't watch it.
If you are a Rickman fan as I am, do not hesitate about buying this DVD, but anyone else may want to rent it first.
Movie Review: Alan Rickman fan service.
Summary: 4 Stars
Having not the faintest idea what this movie was I about, I rented it merely due to the fact it stars the illustrous and very sexy Alan Rickman. However, I soon found it was a many layered and sensual film, falling into the pyschological thriller genre I've come to enjoy. It plays out like a M. Night Shyamalan film, keeping the viewer confounded up until the very ended, and perhaps afterwards, assuring they'll watch it again the catch the tell-tale signs. Alan is enough reason to rent it, but the movie itself is worth buying.Movie Review: Twist and turn
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie has many twists and turns in it so watch the movie until the very end. Personally, I would not be interested in the stranger when I could have Alan Rickman but that is what the film would like you to believe.
I certainly wouldn't have done a nude scene for a movie but Alan Rickman is a far braver person than me.
Movie Review: All that, for the last five minutes
Summary: 3 Stars
I came to 'Dark Harbor' with illicit knowledge of the denouement, just by virtue of the place I'd first seen it reviewed. Given that DH is a suspense thriller, the sort where the ending should make you re-evaluate everything you've seen previously, I won't pass on what I knew. Which is a real shame, because some of you out there would buy the dvd just for those last 5 minutes, if you knew what they were - despite the fact that the preceding 84 are less than stellar. But I can at least tease with the fact that we get a full frontal nude shot of Alan Rickman, albeit from a distance. There are not enough nude men in the movies; kudos to Rickman for evening up the balance.So what brings the movie down in the ratings? Certainly not the acting. Rickman, as David Weinberg, demonstrates his usual command of the set which so unnerved Kevin Costner, with a subtlety which might surprise viewers who have only seen him in his more flamboyant villain roles. Rickman is fearless in presenting unpleasant, difficult characters who nevertheless engage our sympathy. The only rub is the unconvincing Jewish Bostonian accent, which undermines his most powerful tool as an actor: his rich, expressive voice. Given that the plot hardly turned on him being American, it seemed a bit pointless to hamper his performance like that.
Thank heavens the same decision wasn't made in regard to Polly Walker, who has a classic beauty but again makes the acting grade more for her wonderful, low clear diction. Her cut-glass British accent enhances rather than distracts from her character, Alexis, giving her both the air of reserve and the upper-class status which strengthen some of the more creaking elements of the plot. Alexis is the primary viewpoint character of the film, a presence in virtually all the scenes except the one which gives us the clue as to what is actually going on; and she elicits ample sympathy to make up for our reaction to her colder, supercilious husband.
Norman Reedus, as the third in this unlikely menage, is required only to smoulder, threaten and be vulnerable on order. Wearing heavy eye makeup and a concealing fringe for much of the piece, as the beaten-up nameless drifter whom David and Alexis pick up from the roadside Reedus has little to say, and says that haltingly as if using words for interaction with other people were a novelty to him. (Just as well, for his own accent veers disconcertingly between Britspeak and USslang.) Of the three he is the cypher, the one whose motivations are least clear throughout the film. It's a difficult role to pull off, but he manages the part, if not as staggeringly as the other actors.
And a damned good thing, since there is little else other than the acting to this film: only about seven speaking parts in total, and the action and movement you'd expect of a play, not a movie. I don't think DH is an adaptation from stage to film, but it has all the hallmarks thereof: long set pieces of dialogue between the principals, heavy use of interior sets (despite the ravishing Maine landscape in which it was shot), relatively little cross-cutting of scenes or change of camera angles, few closeups, few time jumps and a linear narrative.
And there you stumble right into the main problem: the fact that director Adam Coleman Howard has generally failed to utilise the medium in any but the most cursory way. All this leads to a lack of pacing which, frankly, makes much of the film boring - hardly ideal for a thriller. He's also prone to inserting moments of false threat which fail to galvanise the watcher into any anxiety on the characters' behalves - to whit, the scene with the young drifter chasing our heroine across the bay with a rake brandished over his head, or the yatching expedition in deep fog. All these thriller tropes are old hat and totally thrown away here. He's not quite as inept at suspense as the director of 'Tomb Raider' was at action, but he's aiming for that crown.
For other reviewers, it also seems that the denouement completely lacked credibility. Since I already had a fair inkling as to what it was, I was able to spot the few clues on my first go round; but even then, some of the plot elements do not bear investigation. One could view the course of events which unfolded as simply one possible outcome: opportunities seized by the protagonists as they came up, rather than plans made in detail. But I'm not surprised that most of the reviewers felt cheated by the 'solution' to the mystery.
My sense of being cheated came on another level. If the director had chosen to make the motivations of the main characters more available to the audience - in essense, to make a different script of the same events - he could better have explored some of the more tantalising themes he touched on. These include the level of sympathy that we can extend to people doing unsympathetic, even evil, things; the demands of love and greed; and the way the needy collaborate in their own downfalls. But he chose to skirt around those issues to concentrate on a generic suspense motif which he was ill-fit to develop.
From the film to the dvd. There was a lack of clarity in the picture and the sound which menus and trailers fail to make up for. I also understand that the use of pan'n'scan rather than letterbox format cuts out some of the framing that Howard emphasises in his director's commentary. Alas, there are no actor interviews to give us any idea of what Rickman, Walker et al saw in their roles - a shame, given that the only reason to watch the film is to enjoy the actors' grasp of their craft.