This is an odd murder mystery. Fluidly sliding
between a farce and a stylized suspense thriller, the
truth about Charlie is that director Jonathan Demme
just wanted to have a little fun bringing back the
French New Wave fashion in this quirky remake of the
'63 film "Charade."
A big fan of "Mark Wahlberg, I viewed this at a
regular showing after having missed the screening.
Mark's character is charmingly mysterious; he's rock
solid and so is Thandie Newton as the recently
widowed wife who finds herself in a Parisian
mad-capped hunt for both Charlie's killer and the six
million he had reportedly stolen.
The film suffers from a rocky send off and
annoying hand-held camera work. Thankfully, the
camera tends to steady as the interactions between
the characters ripen. Somewhere in the middle, the
film compels, as Demme experiments he harvests a few
movie moment gems, but the field of roughage
dominates.
I loved the whimsical resolution, perhaps Demme
ought to have made these risky moves earlier in the
film.
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