American Crime

American Crime (2004)

Runtime: 92 minutes

Directed by: Dan Mintz (more on him later)

Starring: Annabella Sciorra, Kip Pardue (the Taylor Kitsch of his time?), Cary Elwes, Rachael Leigh Cook

From: Several companies, including Lightning Entertainment

Yep, after a LONG time, I finally decided to watch another movie that featured Ms. Cook. I figured it was about time; the last one was way back in May. Things definitely weren't like in the second half of '12, when I blew through quite a few of her motion pictures in only a few months. Since the last time I did one of those, she became a mom to a daughter named Charlotte. Thank goodness the child has a good, normal name and not one of the many atrocious celebrity kid names that have proliferated like ditchweeds; you know, like Apple or Bronx Mowgli, or North West or Audio Science or Moxie Crimefighter or all the other awful ones out there.

Anyhow, the plot description, via the IMDb: “A young smalltown reporter, Jessie St. Claire, begins investigating a killer stalking his victims making video tapes. This might just be the career opportunity, which she has hoped for. When she herself becomes a target and suddenly disappears, the case attracts a colleague from the nationally syndicated television show "American Crime" as well. Together with Jessie's camera-man and later joined by her producer he tries to solve the mysterious case.” Yes this is true, although it doesn't show how the movie is presented.

From what I know the movie isn't so well-received online but me, I thought it was average. It's just that it's more odd and strange than anything else. Not that it's off-putting or anything, which unfortunately some of Rachael's movies have been. It's just different. The first half of the movie, much of it is presented as if it was an episode of the American Crime TV show. I have enjoyed watching true crime shows on cable TV, back when they were actually on and before the scourge of reality TV hit and those shows vanished to the more obscure cable channels out there. Think of the American Crime show as like one of those programs you'd see on A&E back in the day. You see a host narrate the story and all that.

Well, the host of this show is Elwes, who may have delivered his strangest performance he's ever done. It's over-acting and just odd, but I was amused by it so it worked for me. The recreation of one of those programs was accurate. It seemed to fit in with the rest of this motion picture. You have wacky editing, transitions, moments... like I said the movie is just eccentric in nature. At least it was better than what I was led to believe. This is mostly a drama/thriller but there are moments of dark and daffy humor throughout. I was not expecting to see such things as one of the main characters being a touchy-feely lesbian, or Elwes cursing at some geese.

Not everything works; that has to be noted. I mean, besides how things don't always make sense, for one thing there's the obvious fake blonde wig that Rachael wears. It doesn't even look like it properly fits her head. She still looked quite pretty but it was still goofy.

Probably the most noteworthy thing about this movie is that it was the last film directed by Dan Mintz before he went on to be the CEO of DMG Entertainment, a Chinese company that did TV commercials before moving on to producing movies and they were the ones who co-produced the likes of Looper, Iron Man 3 and the upcoming Transcedence. No kidding. It does explain why some of the producers of this film had Chinese names.

I shall return tomorrow night.