No wind in her sails

Woody's third movie in a row set in London takes him part way back to Match Point's basic focus on desperate and ambitious young men who're ready (or one is anyway) to kill to get ahead--but this time without the anchor of any American characters and with instead a much more working-class focus. Uncertain characterizations and a tone that wavers between melodrama and comedy make this new mix work poorly. This seems a slick version of something less experienced actors and a fresher (local) filmmaker with more enthusiasm might put more energy into: a tale of crime, guilt, and family meltdown. Cassandra's Dream--alluding to the Greek mythical lady who predicted doom but went unheeded--is the name of a small but elegant sailboat bought by brothers Ian (Ewan McGregor) and Terry (Colin Farrell) as the movie opens. Neither of them really has the dough for such a purchase even though it's a bargain, and so the focus on financial woes begins. Terry, who has a live-in girlfriend, the cheerful and well-meaning Kate (Sally Hawkins), is an auto mechanic with a dangerous weakness for booze, pills and gambling that leads him to end a winning streak heavily in debt to gangster loan sharks. Ian helps run the restaurant owned by their father (John Benfield), but he wants to get involved in managing some flashy new hotels in California and has just met a sexy, high-maintenance actress he wants to impress--both projects that will require big bucks to carry on with, and fast.

Allen's story has a deus ex machina who steps onstage: the brothers' maternal uncle, whom their mother (Claire Higgins) is always touting for his much more impressive accomplishments to their harried dad, whose eatery is steadily losing money. Uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) has made millions as a plastic surgeon in California and Asia --and while in London on a visit agrees to bail the boys out of their financial woes and then some if they'll just get rid of a former close associate, Martin Burns (Philip Davis), who's prepared to testify to some illegalities he used to get rich, which could not only bankrupt him but put him behind bars for a long time to come.

It may not help us too much with this TV melodrama stuff to have to deal with an Irishman (Farrell) and a Scot (McGregor) playing two limey brothers who seem barely matched in class or looks. Farrell (who must play terribly rumpled and overwhelmed) and McGregor (in a desperately hopeful manic mode) do their best to make the brothers real--for the duration of their scenes, at least. But neither they nor their characters are at home with the out-of-tune dialog Allen gives them. The fact that even Wilkinson looks like he's desperately improvising shows how poorly these parts are written. The plot feels cobbled together from reel to reel. The main actors could have been chosen randomly off the A List rather than coordinated with the screenplay. The ladies and the less known Brits in the cast look and sound much more authentic, but everything appears hasty and unconvincing.

Comparisons are damning. The crime has elements of Hitchcock's famous Patricia Highsmith adaptation, Strangers on a Train, even though it’s a relative, not a stranger, who proposes the murder. This rambles and plods; that is thrillingly suspenseful. By an unfortunate coincidence a recent movie much talked of also has a plot with brothers involved in a terrible crime within their family--Sidney Lumet's somewhat dubious, but certainly more intense Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Both movies have, or aspire to, links to Greek tragedy--overtly alluded to in a conversation involving Ian's actress girlfriend Angela (Hayley Atwell). But neither film achieves that kind of resonance (though Lumet's comes closer). Both also have problems with structure, with Lumet's film jumping around clumsily in time, and Allen's meandering and leaving us with several climaxes that instead of thrilling and chilling, simply fizzle. It's hard not to miss Hitchcock here, but even a new director (but proven action-film writer) like Tony Gilroy might have made something much better of this, and comparing Wilkinson's far greater effectiveness as the crazed but morally upright lawyer in Gilroy's Michael Clayton with his blustery devious millionaire Uncle Howard shows how essential writing with depth is for even the finest actor to turn in a good performance.

Once the main premise of Cassandra's Dream is set up, scenes oscillate nervously between the two brothers as Terry comes closer and closer to meltdown and whimpers about how impossible it is for him to perform the dastardly deed, while Ian prods him and urges him on. How much of this do we need? It is not suspenseful. One misses even the rather egregious caressing of English posh in Match Point (it gave us a taste of what the arrivistes were aspiring to)--and one misses also the edge of Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who really felt like an underdog desperate to make it big. Ultimately McGregor and Farrell are like jolly good fellows trying to stay afloat in a project they thought would be worthier, coming from such a famous guy.

_________________
©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.