Suspect Zero

When I was this young, my parents built a cabin. We all basically lived in one big room in that cabin back then because it was cold everywhere else at night. So when I was little, my brother and I slept on the big bed between my parents, who tried to watch movies at night on a small TV placed on the other side of the room. They kept the sound on low so as not to wake us up, but that didn't stop me from opening an eye from time to time and watching, a few silent scenes before I fell back into a coma. I have no idea what the films were about, of course, but I do know that it had a very adult and important effect on me. Suspect Zero was working on me in the same way now. I was interested to see how Merhige would handle pure genre and whether it would even be recognizable there, and indeed this isn't a blandly shot crime film, especially with the unexpected camera angles and odd intercuts. Unfortunately, however, the ship is wrecked by a script that was born in the Silence of the Lambs craze of the time, then wandered around the studios for years and was rewritten thirty more times. At the same time, the story is already mind-numbing, and it's not helped by the stilted dialogue that should move the plot along. They don't progress and the scenes so often don't make much sense. But again, they feel adult and important. (02/09/2016)

For an hour and a half, the film keeps the audience at a distance, only to eventually captivate them and allow them to glimpse into its inner workings. That's the feeling I get from Suspect Zero. Director E. Elias Merhige (Shadow of the Vampire) serves up the entire plot in a cold-blooded style without the slightest dramatic charge, which at first glance seems to lack even life. The viewer is forcibly thrust into the role of an observer who has no choice but to watch what is presented to him. At first, it may seem like a cheap crime drama from a German TV production, but the screenwriting duo of Zak Penn and Billy Ray brings old themes to light in a modern, original, and coherent execution. Director Merhige then pushes the envelope in every shot and leaves nothing for himself. The camera alternates between blue, black and white, and dark red filters, which contribute the most to the detached atmosphere. Aaron Eckhart transformed every role (including this one) into an acting concert. Ben Kingsley and Carrie Ann-Moss look incredibly tired. However, the film does not rely solely on the actors. Whatever crime drama Suspect Zero is, there's definitely a sense of something new here. But the feeling that it could have been better is twice as strong, more urgent, and inescapable. This is a flaw that unfortunately plagues most new thrillers. A great idea, but bad (in this case weird) execution drags the film down. (15/06/2005)

Suspect Zero is not a bad thriller at all. It’s a pity that it’s narrated in such a way that for the whole 95 minutes you don’t really know anything, so you have zero suspicion. And when they start explaining the zero theory, it’s so complicated that there’s really nothing left to do but to believe all those explanatory scenes. But in the finale you see the light and find out that it was not as complicated as it seemed at first glance. In fact, the ending is far simpler than anyone would have guessed. For example, the whole time I was thinking of the movie Seven and I was glad that there were still films with this kind of premise. If the atmosphere is good, and here it was almost psychedelic, then in similar stories it has to be worth it. If you accept the unorthodox narration, you will like it, otherwise you will denounce it as average. And that would be quite a shame for this film. (13/09/2014)