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Secret in their eyes3/19/2023 ![]() ![]() I just mean in terms of the content of the movie. The good news is, that if you succeed, there’s nothing else to compete with you because there’s no other movie like that.ĭo you mean in terms of its budget or its subject matter? The bad news is, it makes it very tough to get through the eye of that needle. The good news and the bad news is that nobody is making anything like this. Whenever you’re developing any movie, the odds are against you, just by virtue of the system that we’re trying to navigate - the studio system. Did you ever think it just wasn’t going to happen? Indiewire recently got on the phone with Ray to talk about why he wanted to remake a film he’s admittedly in awe of and how he went about retrofitted its location, setting and even its core characters. True-Crime Stories Are More Salacious Than Ever - Which Is What Writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns Wants to SubvertĪna de Armas and Michelle Williams Make a Showy Entrance Into the Best Actress Raceįrom 'Reality Bites' to 'Fatal Attraction,' Keep Track of All the Upcoming Film-to-TV Adaptations 'Bones and All': How Director David Gordon Green Landed Unexpected Role in Cannibal Romance Still, the bones of the story are the same, following the fallout from a heinous crime (in this case, the murder of Roberts’ character’s daughter) and the subsequent attempts of a crime-fighting body (now a counter-terrorism force, of which both Ejiofor’s Ray and Roberts’ Jess are members) to bring its perpetrator to justice. Baiting an audience to create drama is not the same as building drama itself.Fans of the original - and there are many, including Ray - will recognize plenty of elements in Ray’s new film, although his Chiwetel Ejiofor and Julia Roberts-starring feature has moved its action to a post-9/11 Los Angeles, a far cry from the late nineties and mid-seventies settings in the Argentinan original. ![]() It isn’t a good substitute for an interesting narrative or more fleshed-out characters. It all feels like pandering to the current thing that scares people in the country. What holds back Secret in Their Eyes is its excuse for added plot. When Jess states that her daughter was the thing that made her who she was, it’s believable as hell and it feels like her soul died. Deglamorized and focused, Roberts is almost vicious in the pursuit of the killer. Fortunately for the movie, there’s Julia Roberts in the best performance she’s given in over a decade. Anytime they try to have a romantic longing scene, nothing sparks. However, Ray and Claire are supposed to have a “will they or won’t they” type romance but Kidman and Ejiofor have very little chemistry. Kidman is a bit stiff but she gets to show some grit, especially in an interrogation scene late in the movie. Ejiofor is stern and determined, and it all feels natural. It’s all the more distracting to the A-list cast, who are all on-point here. Perhaps keeping the mystery of who the killer is would’ve served as interesting enough, but the shoehorning of post-9/11 politics and police work is a bit distracting. It all feels like something to fill out the rest of the plot and extend the movie’s 111-minute runtime. The remake uses the paranoia and added security of the War on Terror to build roadblocks for Ray and co. The difference between the original and the remake is the Argentinian original focused on the Dirty War between 19. Between Claire’s lack of evidence and Jess’ emotional state, there’s still a lot of dirt underneath this case. He thinks he has and returns to Claire and Jess hoping to reopen the case. ![]() 13 years later, Ray now works private security and has spent over a decade trying to find the killer. It turns out the guy is an informant for the government and he’s let go scot-free. Ray knows the guy who did it and tries to get the District Attorney supervisor, Claire (Nicole Kidman) to prosecute him. Ray and Jess are called out to investigate a dead body left in a dumpster behind a mosque, but it turns out the body is Jess’ daughter. Ray (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Jess (Julia Roberts) are good friends with their eyes to the news as the country is still shaken up months after September 11 th. Now in the hands of writer/director Billy Ray ( Shattered Glass, Breach), the story starts in 2002 with a team of FBI anti-terrorism investigators. Secret in Their Eyes is a remake of the 2009 Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Language Film, The Secret in Their Eyes. In the case of this movie’s basis, it worked. Atomic weapons, Internet hacking, drones, terrorism and Communism have all been used in some way or another to make a bad guy in movies that audiences can gawk at and say,” Wow, so realistic!” Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t. Every decade has had real-life tragedy and political climates for Hollywood to build movies off of. Remakes and politically-charged thrillers are hard to do, especially when they’re put together. ![]()
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