Giallo

Giallo (2009)

Runtime: 92 minutes

Directed by: Dario Argento

Starring: Adrien Brody, Emmanuelle Seigner, Elsa Pataky, Robert Miano

From: Hannibal Pictures

My apologies for getting this up late but I happened to watch a movie on pay cable TV (yeah, I still somehow am able to get Showtime and The Movie Channel channels for free, but shhhh; the cable company doesn't need to know about the mistake) which was discussed about on a messageboard so I took the bullet and watched it in order to talk about it there... and here.

First off, I haven't really seen any movies in the giallo style period, so I can't tell you with any certainty if it even lives up to its name or not. The only movie I've seen from the legendary and influential Argento I've seen before is Suspiria, which I mainly enjoyed despite its nonsensical story because of its great visuals and usage of color; oh, and the Goblin score too. He has a lot of fans in the horror community, which makes it all the sadder that he keeps on making films but pretty much all of his recent output is pitiful and awful compared to his best in the 70's and 80's.

Oh, and it's also amusing to me that this movie caused conflict when-as I understand it-the movie producers did not give Brody as much money as he was promised so he sued and blocked the movie from being released here until he got his cash. Not a great sign for the quality of the movie; I've known this story for awhile so I was expecting a bad movie when I finally watched this... and I wasn't proven wrong.

I've also heard that the awful I Know Who Killed Me-which I unfortunately HAVE seen and one of these days I'll review here-could be considered part of the genre too. I say it's a crap film that really rips off Argento and his usage of color and leave it at that.

While Giallo wasn't terrible like I Know Who Killed Me, it's just not a good film. As I've heard other reviewers say as I'm looking for other opinions now, it's just flat-out boring for much of its run time, and you'll forget much of what you have seen minutes after you're done watching the movie. It's just a bunch of stuff happening, mostly listlessly. The plot as it is: in Turin Italy, a serial killer kidnaps a hot model (Pataky) and her sister (Seigner) is directed to a police investigator on the hunt for him (Brody).

There are some interesting ideas, as to why Brody's detective character is so good at tracking serial killer types, but otherwise... blah. That detail and many others aren't really explained or explored as well as they should have been. There's not much in the way of scares or thrills, and while there's some decent blood and gore, there's not a whole lot of it; hell, there's not even much in the way of kills.

There are definitely some goofy moments; even then, though, not even to want to watch the movie to laugh at it. Everything about the serial killer is pretty silly. He's also played by Brody and he wears goofy makeup which made me think either Rocky Dennis or Marv in Sin City. He has what you could call yellow skin, I suppose. It's caused by jaundice. He also speaks with a bizarre accent which can't be native to any ethnicity of people on the planet.

Now, this is what you'd call a spoiler; it's so silly it has to be mentioned. The reason why he has jaundice? His mom was a drug user who shot up while pregnant with him, then he was left at an orphanage*. Both the mom and the son have... Hepatitis C! That's right, a serial killer with Hepatitis C. He kidnaps pretty foreign chicks, "makes them ugly", then kills them. It's all blah and there's no reason for anyone to see it, even to chuckle at the dumb moments. You see Brody smoke a lot (because it's a modern European film, I guess) and it's deathly dull. If you're an Argento fan I'm sure you'd be the most disappointed. Stick to his famous films or track down the most famous of the giallo movies, which is advice I should follow myself.

* There's a brief flashback that nearly had me dying from laugher. You saw the serial killer as a young boy, being teased for having jaundice. For some reason, they really wanted to stress that he was yellow, so he was practically glowing neon yellow like the sun! No exaggeration.

I'll be back Thursday night with what will likely be another review of a horror film, even if this Giallo movie wasn't really even giallo as I understand it or much in the way of horror either.