SYNOPSICS
A Crime (2006) is a English movie. Manuel Pradal has directed this movie. Harvey Keitel,Emmanuelle Béart,Norman Reedus,Joe Grifasi are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2006. A Crime (2006) is considered one of the best Crime,Thriller movie in India and around the world.
While returning home after fixing the lights of a billboard, the worker Vincent Harris passes by a taxi with a damage door panel. When Vincent arrives home, he finds his wife murdered on the floor of the living room. He claims that the driver was wearing a red jacket and a ring with a large stone. Three years later, he lives in Brooklyn but is still chasing the killer of his wife. His dysfunctional neighbor Alice Parker has a crush on him, but Vincent is haunted by the ghosts of his past. When Alice meets the cab driver Roger Culkin out of the blue, she seduces him, damages his taxi and gives a red jacked and a ring to him. Then she forces him to meet Vincent, inventing a culprit to release Vincent from his past and stay with her.
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A Crime (2006) Reviews
Weird, but Original
While returning home after fixing the lights of a billboard, the worker Vincent Harris (Norman Reedus) passes by a taxi with a damage of about 2 x 45 cm on the door. When Vincent arrives home, he finds his wife murdered on the floor of the living room. He claims that the driver was wearing a red jacket and a ring with a large stone. Three years later, he lives in Brooklyn but is still chasing the killer of his wife. His dysfunctional neighbor Alice Parker (Emmanuelle Béart) has a crush on him, but Vincent is haunted by the ghosts of his past. When Alice meets the cab driver Roger Culkin (Harvey Keitel) out of the blue, she seduces him, damages his taxi and gives a red jacked and a ring to him. Then she forces him to meet Vincent, inventing a culprit to release Vincent from his past and stay with her. "A Crime" is a weird but original movie, supported by the magnificent Emmanuelle Béart in the role of a fatal woman. The story is unusual and follows the style of a film-noir, and the mysterious character performed by Emmanuelle Béart is one of the most manipulative I have ever seen, using her sexy body to create an illusional relationship with the tough taxi driver Roger Culkin to achieve her ultimate objective. The movie has erotic scenes performed by Emmanuelle Béart and Harvey Keitel and I liked it. My vote is seven. Title (Brazil): "O Crime" ("The Crime")
Excellent thriller in the tradition of Henri-Georges Clouzot and René Clément
Some people might have two problems with the film: 1. It's rather old fashioned (which is a good thing in my opinion, I don't like the regular hyped mainstream trash). The plot is the kind of story that could come from a novel of Patricia Highsmith, and the look of the film is more like it's from the late 70's or early 80's. 2. The pretty complex story with a lot of strange (and maybe) almost unbelievable coincidences. And you don't get a simple positive character for identification. Exact the same way many french thrillers from the good old times were working (especially those of Clouzot). Though sometimes these films seem a bit too over-constructed (and I must admit I had this problem when I first saw Clouzot's "Les Diaboliques", 1955). But when you accept this (and life itself sometimes surprises us with strange coincidences too), you will see an excellent, very emotional thriller with great performances. You'll never know what happens next!
Undeveloped screenplay
Although this was an intriguing film and Mr. Keitel is always a pleasure to watch, the screenplay left me disappointed. In the first place, all the husband did was glimpse a taxi passing him in the opposite direction and from that deduced that the taxi driver killed his wife. No motive, no explanation. We just see her dead body and leap ahead three years to see the man obsessed with his wife's murder. For no reason that I can ascertain, even the cops take it for granted that the taxi driver was the culprit; all this based upon one brief glance of a speeding taxi. We (the viewers) didn't even get a good look, but the husband managed to note a long gash in the driver's door, a large ring on the driver's hand and a red jacket the driver was wearing. Now we're expected to believe that three years later the murderer is still driving around in his taxi with his red jacket and big ring. In the end, a broke and homeless taxi driver and a broke woman suddenly have a nice vehicle to drive and in it she finds a large ring which presumably tells us that after all, this man is actually the taxi driver who murdered a woman three years earlier. If I were a cop, she and the writer are the only culprits I'd throw in jail.
Not worth watching
It becomes very obvious in the first few minutes that the characters aren't going to behave like real people do and that it's going to be a study of something "deep". I thought, OK this might work - there might be some great truth at the end that justifies the outlandish plot. Nope - like the Lady in the Water - at the end you realise that you really did waste your time. MILD SPOILERS start And no I did not miss the "clues" scattered through the film that Keitel may have done the deed. If it was meant to be interpreted that he did then the plot is incredibly stupid. If they were intended to provide some ambiguity so that Beart could rationalize her actions - then that makes more sense but I think it's the former seeing that none of the characters' actions are very believable. MILD SPOILERS end In summary this is another case of someone having a somewhat clever premise but not being able to decide what to do with it. So aside from some shots of Keitel's kiester and Beart's new assets (they weren't there in Manon des Sources...) there's not much that is interesting to see here.
Intriguing
Vincent (Norman Reedus) is still suffering the loss of his wife killed three years ago by some psychopath taxi driver. He can't move with his life so his neighbor (Emmanuelle Béart) who has a crush on him tries to help him by trying to find this killer. Easy? Maybe. So she picks a random taxi driver (Harvey Keitel) and starts to get involved with this strange guy and she's gonna invent that this guy is really the killer of Vincent's wife. And then... The story behind the movie "A Crime" is one of those intriguing stories where the next movement, the next step is always awaited. There are many surprises, not in that clichéd sense of plot twists, but just in the way that you can't see the obvious, it doesn't exist here. A quiet and slow paced story where the development of the characters and their actions is more important than to really know if they're gonna find the killer or what's gonna happen with Roger the taxi driver. But this is not a perfect screenplay, there's few things wrong with it (the beginning was way too fast, in one moment Vincent see his wife dead and then the movie leaps three years later; and his first moments with his neighbor are quite strange, not well explained). But besides that the movie floats very well and leaves the viewer wanting more of it. "A Crime" runs about 100 minutes but I think that it could be more longer specially in terms of characters development (mostly Vincent), showing the previous life of the main characters and things like that because these characters are presented and we're feel like "Can we like these characters? What's their reason behind their actions"? It misses much. The performances are good, most notably Harvey Keitel (How come this guy gets incredible roles where he has to perform erotic scenes at the age of 60? Things that even younger actors don't do frequently and I'm even comparing him with his young co-star Reedus who only has one scene with Béart and it's not even close of Keitel's seductive scenes with Béart). Béart was quite convincible in some parts as the desperate woman who wants to be with Vincent but instead she got trapped and got romantically and sexually involved with the taxi driver. I really liked Norman Reedus mysterious performance here but I wished he could have more scenes and a better character development. Most of his lines are whispered so I advise you to turn up the volume or you're probably miss what he's saying. A surprising, effective and great film to watch. 9/10