Review of The Two Faces of January (2014) by Kyle H — 02 Sep 2014

There are a lot of elements presented dialectically instead of in a complementary way in Hossein Amini's THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY. The writer / director no doubt purposely made choices for contrast but, in this writer's opinion, the experiment failed from a directorial standpoint.

What elements, exactly, are being addressed here? Editing that does nothing in terms of pacing, quickly cuts past transitions and doesn't work in conjunction with the score for any special dramatic effect.

A score that is completely misused, even so far as to make the potentially tense scenes feel boring. Disregard for anything that may vary the energy of the film. Although, while I am quick to blame Amini for failures in assembling the movie directorially, I will also be the first to praise his writing.

The sharp dialog is natural feeling as well as situated in contexts that are rich with metaphorical value. Helping these metaphors along was the excellent cinematographic work of Marcel Zyskind. Each image was epic in scope, beautiful and meaningful.

The greatest achievement of the movie is in its wonderful imagery. All the while, the ensemble does mostly good work in bringing the situations of the text into taut actualization. While Dunst is often under-used (and performance sometimes overplayed), Mortensen and Isaac work masterfully at playing off each other, working as delightful foils and ultimately holding most of the intrigue of the film in their character relationships.

This tale of two men and their rivalry is sometimes self-defeating in building tension, but still an interesting character piece layered with great metaphors: a delight to look upon.