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PostPosted: Sun Mar 03, 2013 4:35 pm 
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Blue Caprice

New angles on a killing spree

Based on the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks (but with a tighter timeline) in which over a period of several weeks ten random victims were killed and three were wounded by a pair of snipers hidden in a Chevy Caprice (the "Blue Caprice" of the story) in Washington D.C., Alexandre Moors’s feature debut is a semi-road movie that looks at the two killers' stories prior to the event. The film follows the elder John and 17-year old Lee as they eventually prepare to carry out their acts of gun violence. Isaiah Washington and Tequan Richmond play the duo killers, the older John Allen Muhammad and the young and largely silent Lee Malvo, respectively. Abandoned by his mother for the last time on the island of Antigua, where they live, Lee is alone and hungry. He seeks out John, first seen with his three children, and is taken in by him, partly because he is barred from seeing the children again. John becomes a mentor for Lee preaching hate and teaching marksmanship in what develops into a powerful if warped father-son style relationship. Blind loyalty grows, and death becomes mundane and necessary. Alexandre Moors, who grew up in the suburbs of Paris, has chosen to focus on the relationship more than on the acts, though they indeed do come in the tense final segment of the film. Moors and his screenwriter R.F.I. Porto present the killings somewhat indirectly, focusing more on its sources than its physical trappings, though at once point we are hidden in the trunk of the Caprice with Lee as he targets people in a grocery story parking lot. More importantly we hear John's ultimately grandiose scheme to create widening mayhem, starting with random killings following no discernible pattern.

Some viewers at Sundance were troubled that Blue Caprice makes the two killers "sympathetic." It does not make them sympathetic. It explores a little of their lives immediately before they meet and during their brief period together before their rampage. This provides a narrative structure. It doesn't provide an explanation, let alone a justification.

We first see John, it's true, not as a murderer but a seemingly ordinary man playing nicely with his three children. Young Lee arrives similarly with initial sympathy because his mother has abandoned him. He is a lost boy. As time goes on, it also becomes clear that he's smart. In time Muhammad's inner sickness begins to show, and he begins to seem bent on turning Lee toward hate and cruelty. Moors doesn't avoid the final violence. He merely does not revel in or exploit it. It arrives after a period of growing tension. John Muhammad and Lee meet in the early scenes on the island of Antigua, Then they go together to Washington state. Introducing Malvo as his son, Muhammad falls in with old army pal Ray (Tim Blake Nelson) and his wife Jamie (Joey Lauren Adams). As time goes on Muhammad reveals the he feels deep rage over his own divorce and his separation from his children by his ex-wife. We never really know what Lee feels. When he shows a natural talent as a marksmen when shooting in the woods with military buddies Ray and John. This inspires John to use him as a shooter. We can only guess what moral confusion and desperate need on Lee's part would lead him to become an assassin to please his adopted "dad."

Blue Caprice is notable for its crabwise entry into the world of a pair of killers. Some will feel something is missing -- a fuller explanation of the origins of these acts; a more climactic development of the acts themselves. When the time comes for the two to be caught, nothing could be more low-keyed. You have to take your satisfaction in the blind mystery of the relationship, which has a certain clarity and beauty -- and being taken into the car, even taught how to drive it, that is going to be a frightening hidden weapon terrorizing citizens.

The film owes a lot to its excellent cast, cinematography that makes good use of constantly changing venues, and a sharp, pared-down screenplay by promising first-timer R.F.I. Porto, who was signed with UTA (United Talent Agency) at Sundance after the screening of this film. The Irish cinematographer Brian O'Carroll does some classy work with color and light. Isaiah Washington and Tequan Richmond both do outstanding work. Washington has the extraordinarily difficult task of showing John's bitterness, anger, and hatred without making him a mere villain, and Richmond does something at least equally tricky, showing motivation and emotion in a character who rarely spells out his feelings. A useful innovation of the filmmakers is to have Lee find and periodically read aloud from a military sniper manual. If Blue Caprice works, which I think it does, it's because it leaves you with memories you can't digest, and also can't get out of your mind.

Raffi Asdourian wrote a helpful short review of the film at its Sundance debut and Ty Cooper provides another . David Rooney's Hollywood Reporter review goes into a bit more detail.

Blue Caprice was screened for this review as part of the New Directors/New Films series presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA, New York, in which it is the opening night presentation. The film originally appeared as part of the ten-film Next series at the January 2013 Sundance Festival,

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Isiah Washington, Alexandre Moors, and Tequan Richmond at Sundance

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