Giallo

Dario Argento's latest "Giallo" is definitely brutal and grim, but regretfully still not a genuine throwback to the old-fashioned years of the Giallo; a sub genre of horror that Argento pretty much co-founded as well. This is one of the first times in his career that Argento didn't write the original screenplay himself, but he easily could have, since the film is chock-full of his usual trademarks, including misogynist torture, macho cop characters and a killer character with a hideous appearance and sick persona. In the city of Turin, a hood-capped killer abducts pretty young girls in his taxi and takes them to his secret liar where he has an operating table and a wide selection of delightful torture devices. When the killer was just a baby, apparently his heroine-addicted prostitute of a mother dropped him off at a nunnery in a plastic bag. I suppose that causes something irreversible damage to the fragile mind of a young boy. He also has a liver disease that makes the color of his skin kind of yellow; hence the title. When he kidnaps the gorgeous young model Celine, her older sister Linda teams up with Inspector Enzo Avolfi, who's actually a pretty introvert and reasonably creepy individual himself. The plot of "Giallo" is ultra-thin and not nearly as imaginative as they used to be, with a truckload of red herrings and more twists than a French mountain road, but there are still multiple moments of gripping suspense. The violence, however, is following the trend of the nowadays torture porn flicks (like "Hostel" and "Saw") and just comes across as repulsive, gratuitous and uncompromising. The sniveling killer pulls teeth and carves up the girls' pretty faces like he's on the set of the umpteenth unnecessary torture porn flick instead of a Dario Argento Giallo homage. The murders in Gialli movies have always been sadistic and gruesome, but at least they were often presented in style. But enough complaints now, as "Giallo" undeniably still is a worthwhile film for Dario Argento fanatics like myself and many others. I'm sick and tired of reading stuff like how the legendary Italian director Dario Argento lost his magical touch and ought to retire! As far as I'm concerned, Argento is still the only one who delivered a genuine Giallo in the post-2000's (with "Sleepless") and his other efforts like "The Third Mother", "Do you like Hitchcock" and the two episodes in Masters of Horror are fantastic entertainment.

When the man responsible for some of the best giallos ever made directs a movie simply titled Giallo, then I suppose one might reasonably expect him to fully embrace the conventions of the genre (many of which he was instrumental in establishing). Instead, Argento only loosely follows the giallo format, the grimy approach he adopts being more akin to the recent US 'torture porn' trend, a fact that has unsurprisingly caused something of a critical backlash from fans of Italian horror.

But although Giallo clearly doesn't warrant its title, and, devoid of his usual visual flair and labyrinthine storytelling, is far from the director's best work, neither is it totally deserving of the drubbing it has received.

The film moves along briskly enough, switching regularly between crime and police procedure to ensure that boredom never sets in; the hero cop-with-a-dark-past, Enzo Avolfi, is played with conviction by Adrien Brody; Emmanuelle Seigner makes for a decent enough side-kick; the rather lovely Elsa Pataky is required only to look scared and beautiful, but does so convincingly; and the strangely familiar killer is delightfully daft—an ugly, dummy-sucking, bandana-wearing taxi-driver with yellow skin (caused by a dose of Hepatitis C, inherited from his junkie mother) and a hatred of all things beautiful.

Argento also finds time for a few seriously nasty moments, including a graphic hammer to the skull scene, a nasty bit of finger pruning (resulting in plenty of pumping blood), and a wince-inducing moment involving shards of broken glass.

Whilst it is true that Argento's typical sense of style might be lacking on this occasion, there is still enough to enjoy about this film to make it worth a go—after all, even Argento at his worst is better than many other directors at their best.

The high point in the film comes midway in the form of Adrian Brody's childhood flashback: the camera heaves this side and that inside an amber-lit room as though floating in the air while a music box lullaby that brings back memories of Goblin's School at Night theme from Profondo Rosso chimes in the background. Other than that, the movie might as well have been called "Routine Slasher" because there's nothing that recalls the glorious days of the Italian giallo here, no wink or homage or black-gloved killer stalking distraught heroines in kitsch/chic Rome apartments, countryside villas, and medieval architecture and certainly none of the Technicolor phantasmagoria Argento and his peers conjured on celluloid 30 years ago because anyone who has followed Argento's career knows he has been working in dark muted DV canvases for the past 10 years, this absence of style flooded with wooden acting, bad English from non-English speaking actors, and a script the sum of plot contrivance happenstance and logic jumps. Some will argue these have been staples of Argento's career and I will disagree because their place has always been peripheral to a certain grand guignol aesthetic by whose outrageousness, stylistic or otherwise, not only have they been relegated to the margins but they have made perfect "sense" there in the margins as part of Argento's style (or Italian horror film-making in general). If Mother of Tears was a bold step in the direction of Phenomena's schizophrenic conclusion, this is a step backwards to the undistinguished workmanlike nature of Il Cartaio and Ti Piace Hitchcock. Everything here is generic. The score sounds like Batman Returns throwaways (Claudio Simonetti's absence is sorely felt), the villain is a curious mixture of pathetic and creepy, Argento's stylized violence is conspicuously absent. This is a serial killer movie trying to balance between crime procedural and slasher such as one may find in Lionsgate's STD catalogue. If you're looking for the giallo homage the title promises, you'll find it in Sleepless. This is a routine affair not worthy of the master's name or his fans' time and money.

Giallo (2009)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Looking at the title and seeing Argento's name, you might expect this film to be a giallo but you'd be mistaken. Set in Italy, a woman gets kidnapped by a psychopath killer so her sister (Emmanuelle Seigner) teams up with an Inspector (Adrien Brody) to try and locate her. There's no question that Argento's career has been very hit and miss over the past twenty-years but I've been pretty kind to him finding many of the films to be entertaining for what they are. At the same times he's made some really bad stuff like PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? and while this one here isn't that bad, it's still lower level stuff and it's a shame considering I'm sure many were hoping for a better project. The biggest problem is the screenplay that is downright horrid as it gives us no characters to care for, an idiotic killer and some really lame dialogue. The story jumps around so much that at times it feels as if the movie doesn't know what it's trying to do or what type of story it's trying to tell. The sister characters come across as people we can't really stand so we don't care if they live or die. The Inspector character isn't any better as the screenplay tries to give him some backstory yet it's nothing interesting or deep enough to make us care. Then there's the killer known as "Yellow" because of his skin color. I'm really not sure what they were thinking but it just doesn't work. The film throws in some rather tame death sequences with many of them happening off screen. We do get a few gory shots that are pretty over the top but nothing we haven't seen countless times before. Female characters have never been a strong point in any Argento film and that continues here as I really didn't care for Seigner's character or her performance. Watching Brody here you have to keep pinching yourself that he's an Oscar-winner as he really doesn't come off looking too good. Then we have Argento who must have lost any of his stylish eye because there's very little. All in all, this is a pretty big mess and a real disappointment for me as I was one of the few who really enjoyed his third entry in the Three Mothers series. I do hope he continues to make more films but hopefully they'll turn out better than this.

When a director distances himself from a movie that is never a good sign. And after watching this movie I have to say that he is right to do so if there is truth to this claim. There was a time Dario Argento could do no wrong. So what exactly happened? Maybe we will never find out. But for now I understand very much that this isn't a movie to be proud of. There is not one scene that shows the master's brilliance. It does make me wonder what the movie could have been without the interference of the producers. It also doesn't help that the story is quite weak. There are no twists and turns. Well, maybe a very little one. None concerning the Killer. But the biggest flaw of "Giallo" is the lack of real tension and suspense. Even when the killer is known a giallo movie should provide thrills. Otherwise what would be the point of this movie. (Thinking about it, this movie can be seen as a bad parody about the giallo genre.) Adrian Brody and the beautiful women are the only things that stand out in this below average product. Avoid big time!