So this movie starts with some quality atmosphere.
A Leonard Cohen song. A private detective and a beautiful, yet mysterious woman sit in a fancy restaurant. The woman looks like a porn version of Isabella Rossellini in Blue Velvet. She flirts for fun or necessity and is out of his league by far. The woman is in love with an unknown man, a dangerous man. But she's not sure if she's the only woman in his life. So she hires the aforementioned private detective. However, it seems that this beautiful woman isn't very bright and refuses to give him anything but vague information about the man.
Of course, he starts following the wrong man. He is following Captain Stottlemeyer from Monk instead of Neil Young who decided to swap his style with Jim Jarmusch for this occasion.
Now the game begins. While our detective is following the wrong man, he is followed by another detective, Stella (who confusingly looks like a boring version of the mysterious woman), hired by his "it's complicated" girlfriend. And to top it all, there's also some hit-man looking dude watching them menacingly from afar.
This part is really boring. Our detective finds out that the wrong guy he's following leads a double life. He has two wives, two kids and is basically living the lives of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse respectively. The detective proceeds to tell Ms Dolan (the woman who hired him) all the spicy details on the wrong guy and apparently she doesn't know anything about the person she's so in love with that an image of her anime silver fox Neil Young leading a farmer's life doesn't seem suspicious at all.
Upon learning "truth" about her dear beloved 40 year old emo Neil Young, Ms Dolan wastes no time as she passionately falls in love with the detective, who promises to protect her. However, that doesn't happen as she suddenly disappears (that menacing hit-man dude finally played his long awaited role in the movie).
Now this is the part of the movie when you're sitting there thinking what the hell. Where is Neil Young already, who is the hit-man person, why do we know an excessive amount of detail about the guy that wasn't even supposed to be followed, when is this going to end and how can they save this mess? But they don't. They don't save the mess. Instead there's a sudden love story between Stella and the detective, and something like an 8 minute scene of him trying to talk her into having sex with him, which is, by the way, kind of creepy. They become partners in solving this mystery, but they *still* don't know that Mr Double Life isn't Ms Dolan's man. Their incompetent poking around this man's life causes it to shatter, and we see Stella driving his country wife somewhere, but of course that part of the plot is just forgotten later and never mentioned again.
Suddenly, just as we start forgetting about what was supposed to be the main plot of the movie (not because of director's artistic tendencies, but because it is really boring), the detective guy runs into Ms Dolan holding hands with her actual man. He finally (god bless) realizes that he's been following the wrong person. BUT poor Ms Dolan doesn't know what's in store for her. Neil Young has a completely unexplained plan to murder her, while his bodyguard is still staring menacingly downstairs. She is saved by the detective, Neil Young is left hanging from the balcony, he lets her romantic fantasies about him down, she catches a train and leaves the city, he finally has sex with Stella. The End.
To sum it all up, I wasn't really satisfied with this movie. I only gave it 5 stars because I was down with flu and the other movies that I watched that day were even worse (Autumn In New York, for example). It seemed like the director had a fun idea, a bit of noir, a bit of comedy and mystery, but in the end everything ended up being unfinished, unexplained or completely illogical. Some characters were painfully 2-dimensional, a lot of screen time went to character arcs and plots that were never finished (country wife and her lover, Neil Young and his plan to kill Ms Dolan, detective's girlfriend, to name just few) so I was left watching credits roll, feeling very disappointed. It would be an overstatement to say that the disappointment came from caring about the characters, because I only wished the worst to happen to all of them, but after spending 97 minutes (that felt like 297 minutes, let's blame it on the flu) I wanted to get some feeling of closure, at least.
Of course, he starts following the wrong man. He is following Captain Stottlemeyer from Monk instead of Neil Young who decided to swap his style with Jim Jarmusch for this occasion.
Now the game begins. While our detective is following the wrong man, he is followed by another detective, Stella (who confusingly looks like a boring version of the mysterious woman), hired by his "it's complicated" girlfriend. And to top it all, there's also some hit-man looking dude watching them menacingly from afar.
This part is really boring. Our detective finds out that the wrong guy he's following leads a double life. He has two wives, two kids and is basically living the lives of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse respectively. The detective proceeds to tell Ms Dolan (the woman who hired him) all the spicy details on the wrong guy and apparently she doesn't know anything about the person she's so in love with that an image of her anime silver fox Neil Young leading a farmer's life doesn't seem suspicious at all.
Upon learning "truth" about her dear beloved 40 year old emo Neil Young, Ms Dolan wastes no time as she passionately falls in love with the detective, who promises to protect her. However, that doesn't happen as she suddenly disappears (that menacing hit-man dude finally played his long awaited role in the movie).
Now this is the part of the movie when you're sitting there thinking what the hell. Where is Neil Young already, who is the hit-man person, why do we know an excessive amount of detail about the guy that wasn't even supposed to be followed, when is this going to end and how can they save this mess? But they don't. They don't save the mess. Instead there's a sudden love story between Stella and the detective, and something like an 8 minute scene of him trying to talk her into having sex with him, which is, by the way, kind of creepy. They become partners in solving this mystery, but they *still* don't know that Mr Double Life isn't Ms Dolan's man. Their incompetent poking around this man's life causes it to shatter, and we see Stella driving his country wife somewhere, but of course that part of the plot is just forgotten later and never mentioned again.
Suddenly, just as we start forgetting about what was supposed to be the main plot of the movie (not because of director's artistic tendencies, but because it is really boring), the detective guy runs into Ms Dolan holding hands with her actual man. He finally (god bless) realizes that he's been following the wrong person. BUT poor Ms Dolan doesn't know what's in store for her. Neil Young has a completely unexplained plan to murder her, while his bodyguard is still staring menacingly downstairs. She is saved by the detective, Neil Young is left hanging from the balcony, he lets her romantic fantasies about him down, she catches a train and leaves the city, he finally has sex with Stella. The End.
To sum it all up, I wasn't really satisfied with this movie. I only gave it 5 stars because I was down with flu and the other movies that I watched that day were even worse (Autumn In New York, for example). It seemed like the director had a fun idea, a bit of noir, a bit of comedy and mystery, but in the end everything ended up being unfinished, unexplained or completely illogical. Some characters were painfully 2-dimensional, a lot of screen time went to character arcs and plots that were never finished (country wife and her lover, Neil Young and his plan to kill Ms Dolan, detective's girlfriend, to name just few) so I was left watching credits roll, feeling very disappointed. It would be an overstatement to say that the disappointment came from caring about the characters, because I only wished the worst to happen to all of them, but after spending 97 minutes (that felt like 297 minutes, let's blame it on the flu) I wanted to get some feeling of closure, at least.