The next couplet of thrillers to round out the current streak of four on my rolling Netflix queue feature Sandra Bullock in the top-billed roles. Ms. Bullock has made a handful of thrillers in her career, and, for the record, I tend to like her and her films. Her movies may not be masterpieces of filmmaking, but a good percentage of them are entertaining. She doesn't take many risks as an actress, since her films largely fall into the categories of romantic comedies (While You Were Sleeping, Six Weeks' Notice) to romantic dramas (Hope Floats, Practical Magic) to thrillers (The Net, Speed) with the occasional foray into movies that toy with variations on those themes (The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, A Time to Kill). Some of her films just aren't good, but I still think she's appealing and plays characters to which I tend to relate at least in some small measure, so I typically give her films, for better or for worse, chances.
I remember Murder By Numbers being advertised and thought, at the time, that it looked decent. I hadn't heard of Bullock's co-stars, Ryan Gosling or Michael Pitt, when the film was released, because I hadn't watched the Mickey Mouse Club or Dawson's Creek, and I really did not know much about the plot, at least beyond the fact that Sandra's character was engaged in a battle of wits with some teenaged murderers. So, I had no real predilections going into this film, which also means I had no expectations about how the movie should play out. I mention this for a reason, but I'll discuss it more at length momentarily.
Bullock plays Cassie Merriweather, a cop who, alongside her new partner (Ben Chaplin), must investigate a murder of an unknown woman in a small California town. What they don't know is that two rich, highly intelligent, and bored teenagers, Richard Haywood (Gosling), a ladies man and all around king of the school, and Justin Pendleton (Pitt), a socially awkward outcast, have conspired to committ the perfect crime - an unsolvable murder. They have no real motive, other than boredom and a disturbing fascination with forensics, and part of their conspiracy involves pinning the crime on the school's janitor Ray (Chris Penn), who also happens to be a pot dealer. Cassie, in her investigation, grows quickly suspicious of particularly Richard, but his father is powerful and influential, she has no concrete evidence, and she has a troubled past that her superiors, including the district attorney, are all too familiar with. As she zeroes in on Richard and Justin, the plot becomes a cat-and-mouse game that forces Cassie into a fight for survival and to convince her colleagues that she is not, in fact, obsessive or crazy.
Murder by Numbers could be reviewed in a variety of ways. I've noticed that the reviews by other Spouters are mixed at best and lukewarm to mostly unfavorable on average. I actually liked this movie enough to be entertained by it. I think that's because I didn't think too hard about it and expected so little that I was pleasantly surprised by how involved I became. That's not to say that the movie was all that great; on the contrary, in all the ways one could look at it, it's got some major flaws. As a movie for the sake of it, however, it was decent and engaging.
The reason why this movie was even remotely as fascinating as it was owes in every way possible to the performances of Gosling and Pitt, who gave their characters so much dimension that the movie, in a significant way, transformed into something of a character study of troubled teens who are propelled to committ murder. The cold calculations of their characters were really portrayed with mesmerizing nuance. Some of that nuance almost suggested a possible romantic involvement between the two of them, and while that was never explicitly explained or mentioned, particularly Gosling's slant on this element infused his character with so much texture, it was hard not to be taken by him. The film could have been reduced to two young, rich, white males who played too many video games and decided to act out on their "encouraged" violent tendencies, but these actors created three-dimensional characters that seem to be more troubled at their core than bored, and these characters were compelling.
As to the other production elements, there were some obvious conventions used and possibly too many story flaws. There was nothing special about any of the visual elements, and the direction was underwhelming. The pacing was erratic, though it leaned more heavily on the side of slower than molasses. The story was incomplete. While the two teenagers were well-rounded characters that held my interest, the Cassie character became a conundrum all on her own. Her motivations were unfocused at times, and no closure was given to her character's dalliance with her partner. The film itself became something of a hodge podge between Cassie's need to fight against her past and the two teenagers' struggle to protect their heinous actions. The intention was to show that Cassie was so troubled, she would identify with the victims of the crimes she investigated, including the current Jane Doe, to the the point of inappropriate emotional involvement which either enhanced her instincts or compromised her investigations or both. Her past (which I can't spoil, or it will downplay some of the impact) also leads her to suspect Richard rather quickly, and though she turns out to be right, it becomes a confused interplay of quasi murder mystery/thriller, a psychological profile of several troubled characters, and a formulaic exercise in vindicating the woman who's taking it all too personally and is rightfully called out on the carpet for it, even it produces results.
So, here's where we can get into how the film can be reviewed in several ways. If looked at as strictly a thriller, the film fails, because the pacing is so slow and erratic, and the penultimate confrontations between Cassie and Richard and Justin are so protractedly delayed, the film really provides no thrills at all. Since the film is billed as a thriller just about everywhere, including on Netflix, it's no wonder that the film would be disappointing at least and "meh" at best to a majority of viewers.
The film could be regarded as a whodunit murdery mystery, but that concept would fail because we already know whodunit, and the Justin character tells the viewer how every step of the way. The film could be seen as something of a noir, but it's not told in flashback or from the first person, and too many ingredients are missing.
I think the best way to regard Murder By Numbers is as a dramatic character study of three troubled characters and how they each approach confronting their various troubles. As it relates to the teenaged boys, I think the film succeeds because their two perfomances transcend the cookie cutter outlines that could have rendered them and therefore the movie a lot less interesting. Besides, given the prevalence of teen shootings at high schools nationwide, this inside look into two psyches provides an interesting perspective bordering on semi-intelligent social commentary.
As it relates to Cassie, however, the film as a character study becomes formulaic and incomplete. Cassie is the cookie cutter; she's traumatized, this trauma affects her life adversely, it affects her work adversely. she encounters a nice man and finds herself, and decides to fight for whatever she thought she lost. The ending of this is too predictable, and while Bullock did a fine job with what she was given, she was not really given much to work with. The character takes few risks because the movie takes few risks, and while this part of it almost wants to be social commentary about certain things, it falls short and flat through the execution of it all.
Thus, clearly Murder By Numbers has some flaws, but I was still entertained by the Richard and Justin characters, which made me like the film a bit when I would otherwise have been neutral or lost interest in it. In ratings land, I think the film warrants a 6.5, for being between cute/mediocre and shaky/entertaining, because it's clearly shaky and would almost be mediocre but for Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt. As for the test, however, it's not a passer. This is a film that would clearly not hold up well on repeat viewings, since it barely holds up the first time. Still, for a slice of modest entertainment that doesn't require too much thought, Murder By Numbers is a worthwhile rental, just as long as the viewer realizes that it doesn't get more by the book than this.