Review of Wicker Park (2004) by Katie H — 22 Mar 2008

Plot: No, Josh Hartnett doesn't make the most convincing corporate up-and-comer in the world, but then Matthew, his character in this pensive romantic drama, is supposed to be uncomfortable in his business .

..( read more )costume. He's a photographer at heart, a sensitive guy who abandoned that passion when Lisa (Diane Kruger), his enigmatic other true love, abandoned him. Their romance had an oddly abrupt end after Lisa left without a word, so when Matthew thinks he sees her upon returning to Chicago, he starts lying to his fiancée and practically stalking his old flame before becoming entangled in a strange tryst with a lovesick nurse (Rose Byrne).

The MGM publicity department busied itself trying to promote this remake of L'Appartement (1996) as some kind of heavy-breathing Fatal Attraction, and director Paul McGuigan certainly fills it with enough slick split-screens and MTV-soundtrack moments to hype it, yet it isn't even remotely a thriller.

There are flashbacks upon flashbacks--Vanilla Sky begins to feel linear in comparison--and the screenplay insists on spelling everything out so we'll be sure to get how thoughtful it really is, but it all isn't half bad.

Though Hartnett is a little out of his depth, his gentle, beleaguered masculinity works well, and the women are both compelling: Kruger redeems herself after being more wooden than the Trojan Horse in Troy, and Byrne is quite good.

Even Matthew Lillard does solid work as Matthew's vulnerable, big-talking buddy. Somewhere in all of it is a surprisingly adult look at the things people do when love seems either too perilously close or too far away to believe in.

--Steve Wiecking.