Review: The Two Faces of January

Set in Athens, Greece, rich sophisticate Viggo Mortensen and his much younger wife Kirsten Dunst come across Greek-speaking American tour guide Oscar Isaac. The latter is somewhat of a charmer and small-time con artist, but the married couple (Mortensen in particular), appear to be hiding something shady too. Mortensen doesn’t trust Isaac in the slightest, but Dunst takes a liking to him, and it’s clear that Isaac takes a real liking to Dunst, as he offers to be the couple’s personal tour guide. However, all is indeed not right with Mortensen and Dunst, and Isaac finds himself tangled up in their mess as well. The rest you will have to discover for yourself.

 

Written and directed by Hossein Amini (the screenwriter of “Drive” in his directorial debut) and based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, this 2014 film is one of those movies where you keep waiting for the real story to get started, only to come to the end realising that nope, this really was the story after all. Given that early on Oscar Isaac and Viggo Mortensen exhibit subtly suspicious behaviour, you think it’s going to be all twisty and complex stuff, but it’s actually really mundane and old-hat. Hell, the longer the film goes on the less suspicious Isaac’s character gets, if anything. Perhaps that’s why no one has adapted the story until now, despite Highsmith’s work being the basis for classics before this (“Strangers on a Train”, “The Talented Mr. Ripley”). Coming with that pedigree, not to mention the screenwriter of “Drive” being in the directorial chair, this just isn’t very interesting and it’s a bitter disappointment.

 

It’s frustrating in the extreme, though Oscar Isaac is excellent and it’s a terrifically scenic film. Less effective, and frankly miscast is Kirsten Dunst, who for me has never topped her auspicious debut in the uneven “Interview With the Vampire”. Whatever it is she’s attempting here, she’s failing, and is not remotely able to project anything beyond boredom and that heroin addict look she always has in her eyes. Dunst is aloof, and the character’s apparent charms prove elusive to the viewer. I’m just not a fan of hers, she’s a distressingly anaemic actress for the most part and not right for the role of the woman who comes between two men, though perhaps the screenplay didn’t give her much to work with from the get-go. I think she’s also young enough to be Viggo Mortensen’s daughter, but hey, some guys are into younger women so I can’t really criticise that. They just don’t seem right together is all I can say about it (Apparently the age difference is true of the novel, so perhaps it’s just the actors’ lack of chemistry that was troubling me). Meanwhile, if you wanna know why I rant and rave against actresses with ‘no nudity’ clauses in their contracts, just look at the scene in this where Dunst prepares to go to bed with her husband. Strained marriage or not, NO ONE changes clothes like that in front of their husband. NO ONE! It takes one out of the moment, unnecessarily.

 

Mortensen is certainly better than Dunst, but I kept thinking how, like Samuel L. Jackson, it’s a shame that Mortensen’s career took so long to really take off (His debut was in 1985’s “Witness” and he continued to act through the 80s and 90s, but I only became aware of him in 1993, with “Boiling Point” and 1995’s “The Prophecy”). He could’ve been a huge star if he were younger. Now he’s 56 years old for cryin’ out loud! (Jackson, in case you were wondering, is 66, which seems insane to me). But it’s the script and pacing that do this one in, no set of actors could possibly make something out of such nothingness. No, not even Jerry Seinfeld. The film is too short to be so damn slow, and the finale is way too neat (Not to mention a certain confession is made that simply isn’t necessary or even true, given we actually saw what happened there earlier. What the hell was that all about? Poor screenwriting, that’s what). Nothing happens for the first 35 minutes of a barely 90 minute film, and when something finally does appear to have happened, it turns out to be a false alarm. You keep watching because you’re convinced that there has to be something worth waiting for, but like I said earlier: Nope, this is all there is to it.

 

Take out the fancy locales, add some silicone breasts and hot sex, and you’ve got yourself a 90s made-for-cable/video thriller. Yes, the acting is better than you’d find in your average Shannon Tweed/Angie Everhart flick, but so what? I expected more from this film and was crushed and frankly a bit bored. Also, was the film really meant to be set in 1962? There was absolutely no indication of this being a period piece as far as I saw, so I was a bit perplexed by finding that out. Maybe I just wasn’t being very observant.  No, this one just didn’t do much for me, I’m afraid. It’s seriously ordinary, despite an impressive pedigree.

 

Rating: C