crime – NZ Film Freak

Mystery in White – J. Jefferson Farjeon

mystery in white.jpg

Writer: J. Jefferson Farjeon
Genre: Murder mystery/crime thriller
Released: 1937
Blurb: On Christmas Eve, heavy snowfall brings a train to a halt near the village of Hemmersby. Several passengers take shelter in a deserted country house, where the fire has been lit and the table laid for tea – but no one is at home. Trapped together for Christmas, the passengers are seeking to unravel the secrets of the empty house when a murderer strikes in their midst.

—

This was one of the first murder-mystery novels I had read, and it got me hooked on the genre.

I think it was after having read an Agatha Christie Miss Marple novel that I decided to investigate the genre further online, and this book came up. I’m not even sure why or how.

Nevertheless, despite it being a book written in the thirties, it was so well written. It was impeccably easy to read, which made it so gripping.

I probably should have told you about this book before Christmas since it is set on the night of Christmas Eve. But never mind!

It’s about a train that gets stuck in an unexpected snow storm. A group of passengers decide to try and walk through the snow to reach a nearby town, but end up taking refuge in an empty house.

What’s strange about it is that the fire is on, the table is laid and a knife has been left out. There are locked rooms and strange occurrences. Then murder strikes!

Storylines intertwine and different character perspectives show the crime from different angles. I loved every page of it! You get so lost in the mystery of it all, and best of all, the ending is brilliant.

The characters are all from different backgrounds with strong personalities – including a chorus girl, an elderly bore and a psychic.

It did get a bit messy within the final chapters, but I’m hoping I interpreted correctly.

A fabulous read! I still think about it often.

Jodie’s rating: 7/10

The Couple Next Door – Shari Lapena

Writer: Shari Lapena
Genre: Mystery/crime
Released: 2017
Blurb: You never know what’s happening on the other side of the wall. Your neighbour told you that she didn’t want your six-month-old daughter at the dinner party. Nothing personal, she just couldn’t stand her crying. Your husband said it would be fine. After all, you only live next door. You’ll have the baby monitor and you’ll take it in turns to go back every half hour. Your daughter was sleeping when you checked on her last. But now, as you race up the stairs in your deathly quiet house, your worst fears are realized. She’s gone.

—
I’ve heard this book is considered to be the next best thriller since The Girl on the Train. While it is most certainly a page-turner (I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel this quickly before), I don’t think the storyline or mystery is on par with The Girl on the Train.

Of course, the money’s in the bag within the first couple of chapters. Playing on everyone’s worst fear of having their child go missing is a gripping basis for a novel. But there were a few major flaws to this story that meant that what began as a brilliantly horrifying story soon turns into an un-mysterious tale.

The main reason for this is Detective Rasbach, who is investigating how Anne and Marco Contis’ baby was kidnapped. While it’s good to have a wise and experienced person in charge, like a Miss Marple/Hercule Poirot kind of character, it is not ideal to have a character who is always right. Regretfully his ‘suspicions’ are always proved to be correct within a couple of chapters, giving the game away too early before every twist and turn.

We shouldn’t be inside Rasbach’s head as frequently because his thoughts reveal the mysteries prematurely. It’s like watching a horror film with someone who commentates it: ‘I bet they die’ or ‘I bet there will be an explosion’, then having them promptly proved correct every time. It spoils the surprises.

Secondly, the entire backstory of Anne is rendered unnecessary and useless. I don’t want to give anything away, but her issues are irrelevant and the conclusion to her part of the story wasn’t needed. Yes, it was twisted and scary, but it didn’t actually have anything to do with the main storyline.

While the story is more crime than mystery, it is a novel that will hook you in from the very first page, which I loved.

Ditch the idea of it being an Agatha Christie mystery, and think about it more as a twisted Gillian Flynn-inspired tale about desperate characters risking it all. Appreciate The Couple Next Door for Lapena’s writing technique, brilliant construction of the story and emotional development. But don’t expect much from the storyline itself (thanks to a certain character giving it away all the time).

Jodie’s rating: 5/10

Murder on the Orient Express

Director: Kenneth Branagh
Writer: Based on Agatha Christie’s novel. Screenplay by Michael Green
Released: November 2017
Starring: Kenneth Branagh, Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Derek Jacobi, Leslie Odom Jr., Michelle Pfeiffer and Daisy Ridley
—

‘Um. No.’ – My review in brief of both the film and book.

I read the book then immediately watched the film, but ultimately they were both disappointing. (The film, more so.)

I am a huge Agatha Christie fan and have read a fair few of her books, but despite its fame, Murder on the Orient Express is by far the biggest disappointment – mostly due to the ending.

CHARACTERS
Basically, in regards to the film, there are far too many characters to keep track of and far too many details to ponder for it to be an enjoyable murder mystery film. Whereas in the book, it is an intriguing and baffling mystery – because you have time to think about everything and consider all the possibilities before the conclusion.

In addition to this, I’d like to add that there are many big names in this film, who seemed to have been cast despite their obvious lack of similarity to the characters in the book.

For example, Mrs Hubbard is described as a plump, humorous, brash, loud and excitable woman, but also motherly and thinks highly of her daughter. Quite clearly, I imagined Kathy Bates would play the role (with her performance of Molly Brown in Titanic in mind), who is the opposite of Michelle Pfeiffer who played Mrs Hubbard in the film as a flirtatious cougar:

Several characters that are included in the book are excluded in the film, or are merged into one character, which became somewhat confusing and disappointing. I was quite attached to the sobbing, ‘sheep-faced’ Greta Ohlsson, who was totally removed from the film.

“She’s like a sheep, you know. She gets anxious and bleats.”

The detective, Hercule Poirot, gets things wrong in the film and accuses people too early. He comes across as a bit of an amateur, which is absolutely not accurate. Totally unlike the calm, level-headed, particular Hercule Poirot who knows the answers long before he says so.

DIALOGUE
In the film, there is a few action scenes that echo Sherlock Holmes. I felt this was jarring and unnecessary (and are not in the book, I might add!).

I was disappointed by this tone of the film because I was expecting a The King’s Speech kind of feel. Where the dialogue becomes a character of its own, where it is so captivating that you find yourself totally lost in what the character is saying – looking for clues in the way they choose their words. Where the dialogue is isolated by extreme close-ups and static camerawork during dry, but captivating monologues.

It’s a shame really! I can see so clearly what I would change about this movie. There is so much important dialogue, but its treated as a nuisance that is rushed through and forgotten about and interjected with pointless action scenes.

ENDING
The ending was the biggest let-down – in terms of the book and film. Without giving it away completely, I will say that if ‘…and he woke up and it was all a dream‘ is the worst ending to a story ever, then the ending to Murder on the Orient Express is the second to worst ending ever. It was a massive deflation after a long, climactic, uphill hike.

In regards to the film, it was more than just the ending that was disappointing. It was the film in its entirety. Basically, there are around 15 main characters in this story, and all of them need to be given almost equal attention as they are all suspects and they all need to be interviewed.

So, as you can imagine, this means there is a lot of detail that needs to be told to the audience in a very short amount of time!

I don’t mean to do the cliche thing of saying ‘it was not as good as the book’, because although this is true, I think Murder on the Orient Express is a story that is simply unsuitable for the screen. It just doesn’t work – there’s too much information that needs to be conveyed.

Basically, if you haven’t read the book, you’re probably going to be quite lost in the film because they skim over the dialogue – which is all disguised in heavy accents anyway. So even if you do catch some important detail, you probably won’t be able to decipher the meaning of it anyway.

MY CONCLUSION
Overall, not Agatha Christie’s best ending, and not an enjoyable film. Too confusing and without the ‘gasps’ and intrigue of the book. Perhaps if Kenneth Branagh picked between playing the main character or the director, instead of doing both, then perhaps more time would have been spent on the script.

I know no one intends to make a bad film… But y’all made a bad film.

Jodie’s rating: 3/10

I Am Missing – Tim Weaver

Tim Weaver book I Am Missing

Writer: Tim Weaver
Genre: Crime thriller
Released: 2017
Blurb: When a young man wakes up bruised, beaten and with no memory of who he is or where he came from, the press immediately dub him ‘The Lost Man’. Ten months later, Richard Kite – if that is even his real name – remains as desperate as ever. Despite appeals and the efforts of the police, no one knows this man. Kite’s last hope may be private investigator David Raker – a seasoned locator of missing people. But Raker has more questions than answers.
Who is Richard Kite?
Why does no one know him?
And what links him to the body of a woman found beside a London railway line two years ago?
—

*I have tried my best not to include any spoilers in this review*

Within five days of reading it whenever I could steal an hour or two, I finished I Am Missing. I breathed a massive sigh of relief; I had been carrying a heavy burden over the last five days. I lived and breathed this story, and I felt as though I had experienced this mystery first-hand. Needless to say, I’m feeling emotionally exhausted now (in a good way).

As the story is written in first-person (rather effectively too), I felt like I was walking in the protagonist David Raker’s shoes. After Raker meets the man without any memory, ‘Richard Kite’, I felt like I had reached a dead-end along with Raker – despite only being five chapters in. It’s a missing person’s case where the missing person is standing right in front of him… Where on earth do you start to figure out who he is and where he’s come from?

“I started to wonder for the first time whether taking this case may have been a mistake.” -Investigator David Raker, chapter 5

Believe me, Raker, I was too. I was scratching my head thinking, ‘how the hell are we going to get to the bottom of where this Richard Kite fellow has come from?’. I felt genuinely anxious and concerned, my eyes drifted away from the book as I bit my lip worriedly, trying to think what to do…

Before reminding myself that I am, in fact, not a private investigator called David Raker, and I am merely sitting on a couch reading a fictional book.

Idiot.

This book does suck you right in, though. I had no awareness of my surroundings when I was reading I Am Missing. An hour became three, and at the end of every chapter phrases such as ‘no way’, ‘shut-up’, ‘holy Jesus Christ’, ‘get out of town’, ‘he did not just do that…’ were muttered as I sat in shock and suspense.

This book was particularly poignant for me because it is partly based in the Dorset/Devon area, which is where I live! I love reading about stories based so close to home.

Style of writing
Being a massive fan of Agatha Christie’s murder-mysteries, I knew I would enjoy Tim Weaver’s crime-thriller from the first page. But it was Weaver’s style of writing that hooked me in before the story itself did; it’s the author’s ability to write an exciting story in an easy-to-read fashion. Perhaps it’s his journalistic background that has influenced his style.

Don’t get me wrong: that is not a reflection of simple or amateur writing by any means. Rather an enviable skill of creating complex and exciting scenes without confusing or losing the reader along the way.

I loved how short the chapters were; it’s such a sense of accomplishment. (This 516-page novel is divided into 81 chapters, which is an average of 6.4 pages per chapter.) But what’s genius about it, is how there is a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter! I really struggled to keep my heart rate down, particularly the few chapters about the ‘The Monster’.

It was about a hundred feet away, on the fringes of the torchlight…Whatever it was, it was following them, crouched slightly, the arch of its back, its arms, visible above the apex of the grass… –The Monster

I read this part on the train, and I can’t imagine what my expression looked like when the guard interrupted my engrossed reading to check my ticket.

The only passages in his book that I found jarring were a few bits of dialogue from a young character called Beth. Maybe Weaver isn’t too familiar with how young teenage girls talk to each other? I would have swapped a few words, and written the dialogue a bit differently. But perhaps that’s simply because I was a teenage girl once. Nevertheless, it didn’t detriment the story in any way.

How I wish I could write a well-articulated story. I kept thinking about Kristen Wiig’s character in Walter Mitty who spoke about how to write a mystery book:

“Connect the clues, and then scatter them so they seem unrelated” – Cheryl, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Although, in my attempts at writing a novel, it certainly isn’t as easy as Cheryl makes it seem!

Characters
Although there was no character in particular I could strongly identify with or whom I looked forward to reading about, the characters certainly all had a strong sense of identity. Perhaps I didn’t resonate with the characters as much as I have with other books because I tend to read books about a female character’s internal, emotional struggle rather than external, environmental problems that Raker experienced in this book.

I did, however, enjoy that the protagonist was not a cold-hearted killing machine, which I’ve found tends to be the case in crime and action books. The emotions of this character surprised me, as he endured remorse, regret and a reflection of what his conscience would be battling with afterward. I liked that about him the most; he’s a forward-thinking empathetic person.

“I pushed the guilt down, burying it with all the grief I’d tried to suppress over the years, the regrets, the fear…” –Raker, chapter 62

There were mini summaries at the end of most chapters, whereby Raker would go over all the notes he had just taken and all the remaining questions yet to be answered, which was massively helpful for the reader.

I also liked how, even in a situation of panic and where a decision had to be made quickly, Weaver would write out the decision-making process of the protagonist. Surprisingly, this didn’t take away from the urgency of the situation either – it heightened the intensity if anything.

“A moment of hesitation halted me, gluing me to the carpet. Take it, and he’d know for sure that someone had broken in. Don’t, and I might never know the truth. In a split second, I thought about the consequences of taking it – stealing it…” –David Raker’s decision-making, chapter 31

Overall
In Weaver’s story, I was absolutely taken into another world where I studied what every character said and did. I wasn’t just reading, I felt like I was actively taking part in solving the mystery. As cheesy and lame as that sounds… I just mean that my suspension of disbelief never wavered.

I Am Missing is a tense read, but I strongly recommend it. I know it’s a cliche, but you seriously won’t be able to put it down. I read it on the train, over dinner, on the toilet, in the bath, at work while pretending to listen to angry customers over the phone, before breakfast… Seriously. At the end of every chapter, your stomach will drop and you’ll be fighting nervous sweats.

There aren’t any lulls or ‘fluffy’ chapters, just a lot of mystery and questions that ever so slowly get answered – but probably not with the answers you’d expect.

Jodie’s rating: 8/10

PS. Note to publisher: On page 248, 11 lines from the bottom, there is an error where the word ‘were’ has been repeated. ‘So what were they were doing together?’ #hireme #wannabeproofreader

Nightcrawler

Director: Dan Gilroy
Writer: Dan Gilroy
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed and Bill Paxton (the dude from Titanic)
Released: November 2014

This film is by far one of the creepiest films I’ve seen. It’s not so much scary, but it does put you on edge and makes your skin crawl. I guess, hence the film title.

Jake Gyllenhaal with his goggly, baby-bird eyes and sharp cheek bones, is enough to make you squirm. Let alone the control he has over everyone. It is so captivating.

He lost more than 13kg (30 pounds) to play the ‘literally and figuratively hungry’ character, Lou Bloom. Gyllenhaal did so by running a lot and eating only kale and chewing gum. He said the diet was completely safe and healthy.

Lou Bloom, is searching for a job he’s really good at. He soon discovers the media industry where freelance camera operators use police scanners to find car crashes, shootings and what-not, to film and sell to local news outlets.

Bloom dives into this career and quickly makes a sweet sum.

He basically represents the media industry and the control they have over broadcasts and the law. He steps on and manipulates every relationship, smudging the lines of ethical coverage along the way.

Having recently gained a degree in journalism, I found the subject relatable. I don’t think I’ve seen a movie like Nightcrawler before where the story is from the media industry’s point of view.

It’s a fascinating film that is quite difficult to explain. But it certainly gets you thinking. But if you just want to be entertained, you’ll certainly find yourself laughing at Bloom quite often! His intense delivery of lines is sure to give you fits of nervous giggles.

Actually, come to think of it, his character sometimes reminds me of Jim Carrey’s Andy Kaufman character in Man on the Moon.

The only thing I was disappointed about was how there were no consequences for Bloom – which I know is the point because he represents the gigantic conglomerate of the untouchable media. But just when there was a major conflict, the movie ended.

Despite that, I loved it, and I am definitely going to watch it again.

Jodie’s rating: 8/10

22 Jump Street

Directors: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Writers: Story: Jonah Hill and Michael Bacall Screenplay: Michael Bacall, Oren Uziel and Rodney Rothman
Released: June 2014
Featuring: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Peter Stormare and Ice Cube
—

22 Jump Street certainly didn’t match up to its prequel, 21 Jump Street.

This one was long and had as many topless scenes of Channing Tatum as possible… I’m assuming this was written into his contract..?

I didn’t find it as funny as the first one because it was so ridiculous. It was similar to the first but more outrageous. Although, I’m sure the Jump Street fans won’t be disappointed.

The amount of references to the first film kept the cookie-cutter-comedy fresh. The movie made fun of itself, hinting at the repetitive storyline and stereotypical characters they play. This decision saved the film from being put on the scrap heap.

It looks like the cast had a lot of fun on this film. As though it was for themselves rather than the audience. Which was actually okay!

I don’t have a lot to say about this film to be honest. It was a bit weird, quite typical, but not as funny as the first. It’s for the younger Hangover fans and the Channing Tatum lovers.

It is what it is!

Jodie’s rating: 5/10

(Trailer contains bad language. Tut tut.)

Public Enemies

Director: Michael Mann
Writer: Michael Mann, Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman
Released: 2009
Starring: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup, Stephen Dorff, Stephen Lang
—

After reading the blurb on the back of the $9.99 DVD I was preparing myself for a mind-numbing 143 minutes of car chases and gunfire. With such an instant dislike you may wonder why I bothered rescuing this film from the bargain bin. Well, I put my faith in Johnny Depp’s reputation of being in the best of films.

Three words; Way. Friggin’. Cool. The car chases were not boring (possibly for the simple reason that the 1930s cars are wicked!) and the gun fire had consequences. i.e. it wasn’t random gunfire for the most part – some bullets did actually collide with people or surroundings, which is always a bonus.

John Dillinger mug shot — The real John Dillinger

Public Enemies is a true account of John Dillinger’s (Depp) bank robberies, successes and being on the constant run from the cops during the depression of 1933-34. Despite it being rather difficult to distinguish many of the male characters during the dimmer scenes due to their very similar wardrobe, the characters were pretty well rounded and before you knew it, you were rooting for the ‘baddies’. You know the writers and film makers have done their job when you end up supporting the murdering protagonists. It’s like Dillinger is perceived as a superhero villain/rock star… He’s the dark superstar of the 1930s.

This action thriller is fantastic because it did happen which makes all of the gasping and gob-smacking moments even more appropriate. However, after doing about ten-minutes worth of research after watching the film, I realised that they embellished the love-interest and missed out the hugest mystery of all; the question mark over Dillinger’s death!

Apparently there was a look alike named Jimmy Lawrence who was a petty thief who became Dillinger’s alias in Chicago, and because John Dillinger burned his fingers with acid to remove his fingerprints, the post-mortem was inconclusive despite the FBI closing the case – possibly to save any more embarrassment in relation to the long chase. I think they should have included that, and laid off on the love interest of Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) a tad.

The filming and lighting was FANTASTIC! It was mostly hand-held with slow motion shots that made chills go down your spine and incredible shadows which created the entire mood.

“What keeps you up at night?”
“Coffee”

Jodie’s rating: 7.5/10