Review of Faces in the Crowd (2011) by Sarah E — 23 Nov 2011

There's a mighty interesting visual hook at the heart of Faces in the Crowd. Milla Jovovich's Anna Marchant receives a head injury that leaves her unable to remember people's faces. It's a rare condition, so much so that it's hard to take seriously even in a melodramatic crime drama, but the way the filmmakers play with the condition on screen makes it scary. Every time Anna encounters a character, aside for her love interest whose beard makes him immune (yes, the story relies on beardus ex machina to work), the character's face changes and only their voice makes them identifiable. This leaves her unable to identify her friends and lover, but more importantly, the killer she saw at work when she walked home the night of her accident. As she tells the bearded cop in the movie, the killer could be standing in front of her and she would never know it. This was a pleasant little twist to the genre for me, because it actually tried to play with film as a visual medium, and, oh, yeah, I didn't have to look at Michael Shanks's ugly, bad acting mug past the first five minutes. Boo yeah.

Unfortunately, that hook doesn't save Faces in the Crowd from massively sucking. The movie is a melodrama and will likely be appearing on the women's network in a few months, so it requires a substantial amount of will in order to be taken seriously. It's not just the storyline that demands this though; the performances are really, really schlocky and corny, and the dialogue contains nothing of substance. The plot is breathtaking in terms of its execution. For all the characters and actors at its disposal, not one of them can make a good decision about anything, least of all Anna, who spends a lot of time worrying about her condition and never once dealing with it. Spend any time at all paying attention and the film will give you a massive headache, not to mention reveal the killer's identity at the same time.

It's still better than Iron Man 2 though.

It's still better than Iron Man 2 though.