Review of Cassandra's Dream (2007) by Markb. — 22 Jan 2008

Except for an early scene that quotes a famous bit in Steven Spielberg's Jaws (and maybe indicates that the two brothers in the scene, who are soon to commit an inextricable crime would have been better off if Bruce the Shark had gobbled them up) Woody Allen's latest film is almost totally devoid of humor.

(Some might say that's ok, so were his most recent comedies.) The staging and shooting of several long sequences in this movie are so static that one occasionally wishes that the brothers' weapon of choice had been not a zip gun but a claw hammer, the better to remove the nails affixing the camera to the ground.

And the surprise ending is far too abrupt to fully carry the punch Woody intended to deliver. Nevertheless, this is Allen's best, most accomplished and entertaining film since Crimes and Misdemeanors over a decade ago.

(Note, of course, that neither film will exactly rival The Sound of Music as a blues-chaser, but who said that happy and enjoyable were always synonymous?) Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell , both playing wonderfully against type, are cast as brothers tempted to carry out a hit that would solve various financial needs and wants; it's not surprising that in classic tradition the assignment's completion and aftermath don't go as simply and smoothly as planned, but the originality of this movie arises from the fact that it would be the perfect crime if someone's conscience didn't so relentlessly get in the way.

Allen shows us which brother has a sense of ethics and which is just a wee bit, um, challenged in that area early on: Ian (McGregor) dumps his girlfriend for a woman he literally meets on the road, while Terry (Farrell) is loyal to his spouse.

(But then, since she's the sweetest woman in the world--if occasionally a little clueless--and she's played by the astonishingly adorable Sally Hawkins, who here pleasantly resembles mid-1980s Rosanna Arquette, why WOULDN'T he be? Love that overbite!) It's instructive to observe that coldblooded Ian endlessly aspires to upward mobility while the compulsive Terry is a working-class joe; Allen knows that the biggest sociopaths often aren't serial killers but CEOs and that it's often not the Norman Bateses or even Hannibal Lecters you have to look out for but the Gordon Gekkos.

..or worse, Gekko wannabes. Terrific byplay between the brothers and an almost comically overwrought score by Phillip Glass (who also did the honors for 2006's Notes on a Scandal with equally smashing results) give Cassandra's Dream a higher rewatchability factor than Allen's earlier exercise in Britpop bloodshed, Match Point.

Despite some predictable musings about greed, fate and The Meaning Of It All, Cassandra's Dream plays like a really, really good extended episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents...