Surveillance
Actors: Julia Ormond, Bill Pullman, Pell James
Release Date: Monday 30th November -0001
Genre(s): Thriller
Running time: 97 minutes
In her first film since 1993's Boxing Helena, David Lynch's daughter, Jennifer, is back with a thriller that will amaze before it frustrates and annoys. After a series of brutal murders in a small midwestern town, two FBI agents - Elizabeth Anderson (Ormond) and Sam Hallaway (Pullman) - arrive to interview three eyewitnesses: an unhinged cop (Kent Harper), whose partner was shot by the serial killers, drug addict Bobbi (James) and eight-year-old Stephanie (Simpkins), whose family were on the receiving end of those still at large. As the interviews progress, we're told in flashback how it went down, but no one saw that twist coming… It's the twist that ruins a perfectly decent thriller - one of those 'Ah, for f**k's sake' twists and will encourage as many popcorn hurlers as it will laughs and walkouts. Up until then, though, Jennifer Lynch exhibits much of her father's flair in finding the awkward in the comfortable, the darkness in the light, the glass in the grass, etc. It's not just the tone that resembles her father's work as Surveillance is inhabited by characters that live in that twilight zone of good and evil: the cops here are corrupt drunks who delight in humiliating innocent drivers; the 'heroes' are junkies who rob dead drug dealers; men are portrayed as cowards that humbly stand by while their loved ones are debased. The performances are hard to fault - Ormond seems to love playing this character and Pullman is at his twitchy best - but it's just the preposterous plotting which lets them down.
