Giallo
Alternative Titles: Agria katadioxi
Director: Dario Argento
Year: 2009
Starring: Adrien Brody, Emmanuelle Seigner, Elsa Pataky
Context:
GIALLO was sandwiched in-between the critically panned MOTHER OF TEARS (2007) and a few years later the abysmal DRACULA 3D (2012) contributing to Argento's arguable decline. For someone once so strikingly visual and unique it would be the Belgian directorial duet of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani who would spark the most interest in 2009 with their neo-giallo AMER (2009), of which the use of colour would put Argento's efforts to shame.
The release of the film on the home entertainment market was delayed due to court action by star Adrien Brody over his unpaid, or rather incomplete salary. Interestingly Brody was not the first choice to play Inspector Avolfi, that would be fellow Italian-American actor Ray Liotta (GOODFELLAS, HANNIBAL) who was replaced for undisclosed reasons. Meanwhile Vincent Gallo (TETRO) was originally scheduled for the role of Giallo aka Francesco Volpe only to drop out for personal reasons and was replaced also by Brody who really did earn his money in this film.
A little fact is that this is Dario Argento's first film that is not based on something that he initially wrote. Additionally Argento would return the referencing of Jason Reitman by featuring a poster of his film JUNO in the film.
Synopsis:
In Italy, a woman fears her sister may have been kidnapped. Inspector Enzo Avolfi fears it's worse. They team up to rescue her from a sadistic killer known only as Yellow.
Review:
Beginning with two female Japanese tourists - in Argento's favourite location Torino - at the opera, they decide to ditch the show and head to a club where one of the girls gets lucky, leaving her friend to catch a cab home alone...only to never make it. A jump cut later and we are now at a fashion house and as well as wondering how many giallo locations they can cram into the films 92 minutes we also are introduced to model Celine (Elsa Pataky - SNAKES ON A PLANE, FAST & FURIOUS franchise) and her sister Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner - THE NINTH GATE) who has just arrived into town. While leaving work Celine takes a cab home alone and what do you know...she ends up missing too.
Cue the odd couple that will take up the majority of our screen time, the peppy amateur detective Linda and the gloomy and emotionally tortured Inspector Enzo Avolfi (Adrien Brody - THE PIANIST, PREDATORS) as they hunt down a mysterious killer whose only M.O. is to take and destroy "beautiful things" and here the film shows its modern influence taking from the later Saw films and Hostel franchise but for some reason stopping short of the excesses of either.
Interestingly as opposed to the majority of giallo films, we are shown quite a bit of the killer which is essentially Adrien Brody mumbling through a yellow hued BO'SELECTA mask and earning every bit of that money he was owed. The decisions by the writers and Argento here (character, make up and unveiling) remove a lot of the tension and sadly for various reasons this occurs frequently throughout the film as no matter how hard the relevant shots try to build the tension up, there is always something unintentionally there to bring it back down. A key example would be early on when Inspector Avolfi is being followed in his car, the choice of music just screams RAI channel mystery music and we instantly know from this that there is no real danger and as a viewer we feel robbed of feeling that heightened sense of anticipation that we know we should be experiencing further reinforcing the whole TV movie vibe.
Summed up perfectly by the tired and uninspired tagline 'To Catch a Killer, You Must Think Like a Killer!', GIALLO plays out like a modern day TV movie - content to plod along with just enough grit to stop you changing the channel and remind you of a genre you love thanks in part to (and also hampered by) its conformity to all of the tropes and trappings of the genre and Argento in particular.
And that is exactly the problem with this "Kitchen sink" film as described by its main writers Sean Keller and Jim Agnew who throw everything they can think of genre wise into the pot only to end up with what essentially appears to be a pastiche of Argento's prior work and the real horror is that Dario Argento agreed to helm the project and in turn produce a self-referential parody of his work devoid of creativity and flair. Although I do not solely blame Argento as I honestly have doubts that he shot more than half of the film with my reasoning being that co-writer Jim Agnew also performed second unit directorial duties and while some shots clearly carry Argento's flair and pattern many do not.While the murder set pieces themselves, something he is famed for, also on the whole appear restrained and laboured. Sure Dario Argento had experimented and played around with stuff like the MASTERS OF HORROR episodes and tried different things in his more modern films such as THE CARD PLAYER but there is just something off about this TV-style movie that makes the viewer wonder.
Clichéd and trying too hard GIALLO is overall a very disappointing entry in Argento's catalogue despite the strong performance by Brody as the secretive, droll yet mentally fragile performance as the Inspector. A special mention also has to be made for the very last shot which I enjoyed very much. If you stumbled across this film on TV and did not know it was by Argento then without those expectations this will entertain you as a throwaway low budget TV thriller to pass the time but nothing more.
Version Reviewed:
This review was based on the Lionsgate UK release which, unsurprisingly considering the production problems and poor quality of the film does not feature any extras making it hard to recommend on any level.