{"id":7538,"date":"2014-02-03T07:00:16","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=7538"},"modified":"2014-02-02T17:05:29","modified_gmt":"2014-02-02T22:05:29","slug":"dvd-giallo-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=7538","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Giallo (2009)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>G<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Poor \/ DVD Transfer: Very Good \/ DVD Extras: \u00a0n\/a<\/p>\n

Label: E1\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: October 19, 2010<\/p>\n

Genre: Crime \/ Thriller \/ Giallo<\/p>\n

Synopsis: A detective with a disturbed past is in charge of tracking down a vicious serial killer.<\/p>\n

Special Features: \u00a0n\/a<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

There are so many things wrong with Dario Argento\u2019s latest film that one suspects he may become utterly irrelevant if he doesn\u2019t find something to recapture his mojo.<\/p>\n

Giallo<\/strong> was billed as the director\u2019s return to form, but it\u2019s really a snapshot of a respected pioneer struggling to find an identity in an age where nothing really shocks. Torture porn has inured audiences to the kind of elegant mayhem Argento used to craft in big screen and big sound productions, but as his own creativity as a writer started to evaporate a while ago \u2013 witness his career nadir,\u00a0Terza madre, La<\/strong> \/\u00a0Mother of Tears, The<\/strong><\/a> (2007) \u2013 he\u2019s started to rely on the ideas of hacks, much in the way John Carpenter settles for rubbish ideas scribbled by fanboys with nary an original idea to challenge the director (as with his\u00a0Masters of Hor<\/strong>ror episode\u00a0Pro Life<\/a><\/strong>).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lengthy essay worth writing about horror pioneers who\u2019ve been relegated to cheap productions that go straight to the video shelves with little fanfare (even for fans), but here the case study is Argento, and a movie no one seemed to care about because of its quality, or they recognized the horror market has no place for veterans like Carpenter, Wes Craven, or George Romero.<\/p>\n

Giallo<\/strong> is a play on the Italian word for the colour yellow, which is also the genre of violent serial killer films Argento pioneered in the late sixties, as well as the nickname for yellow-spined pulp thrillers Italian critics applied to Argento\u2019s work, notably his directorial debut,\u00a0Bird with the Crystal Plumage<\/strong>, in 1968. (The paperbacks are also important textural elements in Argento\u2019s last decent script,\u00a0Do You Like Hitchcock?<\/a><\/strong>)<\/p>\n

Yellow is also the keyword a victim tells Inspector Enzo Avolfi (Adrien Brody) before she dies, and later becomes vital in identifying the ugly, jaundiced serial killer who stalks and disfigures beautiful women because he\u2019s jealous of their perfect form.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s essentially the main plot \u2013 jealous taxi driver hunts, abducts and mutilates pretty doves \u2013 but being a giallo, there has to be a latent trauma that affects a main character.<\/p>\n

In films such as\u00a0Deep Red<\/strong> (1974) and\u00a0Sleepless<\/a><\/strong> (2001), Argento has the serial killer experience a childhood trauma wherein someone dies, and the horror hardens the killer into committing cruel acts with zero remorse.\u00a0Giallo<\/strong>\u2019s twist places the trauma on the shoulders of its hero: Enzo, who watched his mother get stabbed by a stranger.<\/p>\n

Years later fate brings the teen Enzo face to face with his mother\u2019s killer, and he plots and executes a killing. Rather than go to jail or grow up into a serial killer, the passing cop (Robert Miano, terribly underused) protects him, cleans up the evidence, and redirects Enzo into the police force, where the adult ex-killer uses his own dark episode to solve Torino\u2019s nastiest cases.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an interesting twist in Argento\u2019s standard template (as well as the genre), but Argento doesn\u2019t know what to do with it. Enzo broods and he\u2019s a chilly asshole who shows no empathy for Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner), the woman who eventually hangs around to help find clues that\u2019ll rescue her sister from the killer\u2019s carpentry tools.<\/p>\n

Brody recognized the conflicts he could exploit as an actor \u2013 and he tries \u2013 but the dialogue, the lack of introspective scenes, nor Argento\u2019s direction gave him any opportunities to build Enzo into a complex anti-hero. Brody often paces across rooms and hallways because there\u2019s nothing for him to do, and Argento has no idea how to dramatize internal struggles aside from the obligatory, amber-hued flashbacks that gradually reveal Enzo\u2019s troubled childhood.<\/p>\n

The one scene that does work \u2013 belatedly \u2013 has Enzo walking away from Linda after the killer\u2019s fall through a window (appropriated from Argento\u2019s\u00a0Cat \u2018O Nine Tails<\/strong>). She berates him for misleading her, and allowing the killer to die before they could learn of the sister\u2019s whereabouts. Argento holds the camera on Brody\u2019s face, and covers the seething anguish and rage the actor is trying to quietly emote as he walks away from the crime scene.<\/p>\n

Lisa is a wan attempt to riff on the awkward coupling of a man and women in a crime investigation, as was done in\u00a0Deep Red<\/strong> and\u00a0Hitchcock<\/strong>. Different in this incarnation is that it\u2019s a crime that brings the unlikely pair together, but there\u2019s never any romance. The lack of affection is natural to Enzo \u2013 he still keeps the knife he used on his mother\u2019s killer in his desk drawer, an impractical and dangerous idea, if not stupid for a seasoned detective \u2013 but his outright hostility against Linda is unnecessary and inexplicable.<\/p>\n

A scene where he covers his sleeping partner with a blanket is meant to show he disallows any human interaction, but it doesn\u2019t explain why he treats her like shit when he knows the kind of sadism the killer will mete out on her sister – a pretty model snatched on the way to meet Linda.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a minor correlating scene in a restaurant, but it\u2019s purpose is to have Enzo explain his own murderous past, but its problem lies in a judgment call made by the character: Enzo\u2019s opening line is \u2018I know what it\u2019s like to lose someone,\u2019 which presumes the sister is now dead, and there\u2019s nothing neither he nor Linda can do.<\/p>\n

Linda doesn\u2019t protest to his stance, even though it\u2019s her sister\u2019s continuing struggle to stay alive that keeps Linda going, if not Enzo. That\u2019s sloppy direction, and the film is filled with them.\u00a0Giallo<\/strong>is about a serial killer, yet Enzo describes their suspect as a \u201cpattern killer\u201d that sounds like a mistranslation from the script by newcomers Jim Agnew and Sean Keller, who also penned John Carpenter\u2019s\u00a0L.A. Gothic<\/strong> (which played to a disappointed audience at TIFF\u2019s Midnight Madness in September of 2010.)<\/p>\n

Argento provides a secondary flashback to cover the killer\u2019s past, but it starts with his mother shooting drugs – something the killer\u00a0couldn\u2019t<\/em> have remembered while he was\u00a0in utero<\/em> – and dropping the baby off at a convent in a shopping bag, which an infant Enzo couldn\u2019t have remembered in such detail.<\/p>\n

The killer may have a hatred for \u201cbeautiful things\u201d but he doesn\u2019t know what do to with them. After drugging them and dragging them back to his lair, he grabs the odd appliance and nicks, cuts and clips things, but Argento never follows through in depicting the trauma \u2013 either onscreen, or in the pictures the killer takes with an unwieldy still camera to jerk off from his laptop.<\/p>\n

Never mind the use of a still camera (Why doesn\u2019t he use video, since it captures the screams he clearly relishes while he has his victims?). With the exception of a hammer-to-the-head arrack, and garden clippers on a finger, most of what happens is off-screen and implied, and one suspects Argento didn\u2019t like the\u00a0Saw<\/strong>-like torment because\u00a0it\u2019s not native<\/em> to his version of a proper giallo.<\/p>\n

Giallo<\/strong> clearly invokes the tropes of torture porn, but it\u2019s not part of Argento\u2019s\u00a0oeuvre<\/em>, and he clearly finds the concept of a killer grabbing women, strapping them to a makeshift medical table and cutting them up\u00a0stupid<\/em>, so he circumvents the details native to that genre. (Those clich\u00e9s \u2013 beautiful women in prolonged torment \u2013 are what Lamberto Bava focused on in his own \u2018pattern killer\u2019 idiocy,\u00a0The Torturer<\/strong>, in 2005.)<\/p>\n

A perfect example of Argento\u2019s discomfort occurs with a Japanese bubblehead victim, whom the killer snatches in the film\u2019s opening sequence. He grabs clippers and pulls on her lip, but Argento pulls the camera away because torture for the sake of torture has no potential for visual or musical elegance.<\/p>\n

When she\u2019s found by the police, instead of seeing missing lips or dental trauma, there\u2019s merely dried blood over frayed flesh. In torture porn, even implied trauma would\u2019ve had a correlation with a glimpse of utterly gruesome prosthetics, something Argento has indulged in before, such as the clarinet-mouth-mashing in\u00a0Sleepless<\/strong>, and the throat cutting or boyfriend butchery inOpera<\/strong>. The lack of such details means the director was either lazy, or the lack of elegant carnage in the torment rendered a need to show post-traumatic details redundant.<\/p>\n

Giallo<\/strong>\u2019s victims are wholly disposable, even Linda\u2019s sister Celine, whose annoying dialogue mostly consists of \u201cStop the fucking car!\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re ugly\u201d and \u201cYou\u2019re horrible!\u201d If you\u2019re tied to a table and you\u2019ve watched him disfigure and kill someone, isn\u2019t it prudent\u00a0not<\/em> to call your ugly tormentor ugly? Her behaviour can only be regarded as the filmmaker\u2019s lame cinematic translation of a spirited woman willing to fight back because she still has life. No wonder the killer injects a tranquilizer into her tongue soon after.<\/p>\n

Argento\u2019s later efforts to impart some empathy for Celine comes off as bathos: stumbling out from the abandoned gas works where she\u2019s been held, she pauses to look at the sun, and re-appreciate the beauty of green leaves.<\/p>\n

That whole sequence is also lazily directed because it not only lacks visual flair \u2013 Argento makes no effort to create geometrically striking compositions using the location\u2019s odd architecture \u2013 but he also misses the horrible irony of the heroine: she\u2019s literally a few meters away from a busy street where she can find safety. Other scenes in an opera house or the building where the killer tumbles to his death are photographed with some style, but the lighting by Frederic Fasano (Scarlet Diva<\/a><\/strong>) is flat, and his attempts to create a muted colour palette yield sometimes over-lit scenes where there\u2019s glare on surfaces (as in Enzo\u2019s confession scene with Linda).<\/p>\n

The killer is also a peculiar creation that\u2019s supposed to symbolize Enzo\u2019s twin brother, separated at birth. That\u2019s\u2019 not the case, but Brody playing the killer (billed under the anagram of Byron Deidra) doesn\u2019t work because even under the mediocre mask it\u2019s obviously Brody\u2019s nose, eyes, and his low voice speaking broken English with a hard Italian accent.<\/p>\n

It initially feels like a trick designed for a twist where the two rivals are revealed to share the same genetic makeup (maybe Brody was a twin birthed by the drug-head and adopted by his mother in an earlier draft?) or the physical similarities between the two rivals was a deliberate attempt to show how two traumatized boys grew up and handled their past pain\u00a0very<\/em> differently.<\/p>\n

(It wouldn\u2019t be the first time Argento\u2019s shooting script showed undeveloped ideas from prior drafts.\u00a0Third Mother<\/strong> is filled with concepts that were rewritten over several years, resulting in an incoherent disaster.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fairly obvious the killer is played by Brody because in the rooftop fight, we never see the killer and Enzo fighting in one shot.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest disappointment in\u00a0Giallo<\/strong> is the total lack of any bravura murder sequence, particularly in the opening \u2013 almost mandatory in every Argento film. The fact the director\u00a0fades out<\/em> from a wide shot of the taxi after the Japanese bubblehead is incapacitated inside the foggy car is a shock.<\/p>\n

Beyond the death of Enzo\u2019s mother, there is no elaborate murder sequence, and it\u2019s baffling as to why Argento chose to produce this script, even with his own editorial input.<\/p>\n

One can argue he wanted a change from his usual formula, but the lack of any visceral or kinetic montage leaves Giallo as a slow-moving snoozer.\u00a0Phenomena<\/strong> (1985) may be bizarre and ridiculous, but it\u2019s hardly dull, and\u00a0Giallo<\/strong> is incredulously boring \u2013 something the director hasn\u2019t been since his collaboration with Luigi Cozzi on\u00a0Four Flies in Grey Velvet<\/strong> (1971) and the 3 weak episodes in the TV quartet\u00a0Door into Darkness<\/strong> (1973).<\/p>\n

Marco Werba\u2019s score also fails to create any tension, and one suspects he chose to score against the action in place of the film\u2019s subtext; there is a sense of unwavering unease, but the largely orchestral score lacks the dynamism needed for such a dramatically flat film. Argento\u2019s longtime composer Claudio Simonetti wrote one of his worst score for\u00a0Third Mother<\/strong>, but he\u2019s sorely missed in\u00a0Giallo<\/strong>, particularly during stalking scenes where Argento uses editing, voyeurism and some visual style to keep audiences watching a perversely fascinating kill sequence.<\/p>\n

Giallo<\/strong> also had a troubled history, and the repercussions also harmed its chances at a theatrical release in North America. In January of 2008, Ray Liotta was announced to play Enzo, Vincent Gallo as the killer (\u2018Gallo in Giallo\u2019), and Asia Argento to play Linda. By April, Liotta was out, with Brody filling the role of Enzo. Then Gallo bowed out, as well as Asia Argento (the pair apparently had issues after their aborted wedding engagement), with Seigner now starring as Linda, and the killer left to be tackled by Brody, who probably received a big paycheck for doing double-duty as hero \/ sicko.<\/p>\n

A week into production, rumours of financing issues hit, but while the film was eventually completed, there were further rumours of the film\u2019s producers meddling with Argento\u2019s edit, and the upper-level talent (stars + director) weren\u2019t being paid their contractual amounts. Brody\u2019s deal was abrogated, yet his pay-or-play agreement also gave him rights to control his likeness in the event of non-payment, hence his efforts in November of 2010 to\u00a0successfully stall<\/a> the film\u2019s release on DVD in North America.<\/p>\n

Bizarrely,\u00a0Giallo<\/strong> was already available months prior to the U.S. release date this fall of October 19th at Blockbuster, but it\u2019s distribution in North America is more complex, stemming back to an early 2008 report in which the Weinsteins agreed to distribute the film, since they were handling Argento\u2019s soon-to-be completed\u00a0Mother of Tears<\/strong>, and had nabbed the North American rights forSuspiria<\/strong>, which premiered in a restored 30th anniversary edition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.<\/p>\n

Perhaps in realizing the disaster that became\u00a0Mother of Tears<\/strong>,\u00a0Giallo<\/strong> never got its big screen release, and the film went straight to video outlets, with U.S. firm Maya Entertainment handling the U.S. DVD for a street date of Oct. 19, and Entertainment One the Canadian DVD for the post-Halloween date of Nov.2.\u00a0Giallo<\/strong>\u2019s DVD debut didn\u2019t even occur in Argento\u2019s native Italy: the film premiered in 2009 in Brazil and Poland.<\/p>\n

(The upshot of this mess for Argento is while two of his worst films are available on home video, his best – the restored\u00a0Suspiria<\/strong> – isn\u2019t. The Weinsteins, in their typically cruel habit of sitting on acquired product, seem to be playing a daft waiting game as they developed a wholly unnecessary remake for a planned 2012 release.)<\/p>\n

Also aggravating the film\u2019s situation is the publicity campaign. The Canadian cover is ugly and is a generic stars-only cover that says nothing of the film, and the U.S. equivalent \u2013 finally available in the U.S., after Brody and the film\u2019s co-producers\u00a0settled <\/a>– is a slightly more elegant variation; in neither version is Argento\u2019s name given prominence.<\/p>\n

Brody has an Oscar, and his contract may have given him Supreme Billing in all English campaign art, but it\u2019s like giving Ray Milland top billing for\u00a0Dial M for Murder<\/strong>, and burying \u2018An Alfred Hitchcock Film\u2019 somewhere in the fine print. The following French\u00a0blog<\/a> features a selection of international posters. At least the Japanese poster has style, and the Italian puts the director\u2019s name where it belongs. (It\u2019s also weird how Seigner resembles Nicolette Sheridan, but let’s stay away from that.)<\/p>\n

Aside from a flat visual style, the sound mix is shockingly bland. Every sound element has been mixed down into a balanced but unaffecting mix. With no punch in Werba\u2019s score,\u00a0Giallo<\/strong> ranks as one of the blandest 5.1 mixes in Argento\u2019s canon. Perhaps Argento should\u2019ve re-watchedSuspiria<\/strong> to reacquaint himself with the use of sound with which he\u00a0used<\/em> to love to tickle his audiences in the dark.<\/p>\n

The entire production was tailor made for the video rental market, and it begs the question: Has Argento rendered himself irrelevant, or is he the victim of increasingly habitual problems that prevent a pioneer from reasserting himself in the horror genre?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really painful to watch a legend creatively desiccate. Absolutely disheartening.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Vendor Search Links:<\/em><\/p>\n

Amazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a>\"\" \"\"—New movie releases on iTunes<\/a>\"\"
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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0G<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ G . Film: Poor \/ DVD Transfer: Very Good \/ DVD Extras: \u00a0n\/a Label: E1\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: October 19, 2010 Genre: Crime \/ Thriller \/ Giallo Synopsis: A detective with a disturbed past is in charge of tracking down a vicious serial killer. Special Features: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[2489,480,2490,517,2492,2491],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1XA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7538"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7538"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7544,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7538\/revisions\/7544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}