Today's Review: Secret Window
Starring: Johnny Depp, John Turturro
Directed by: David Koepp
Rating: 2.5 (out of five)
Check out Naked's uncensored review as well as images and the trailer on his new website:
THENAKEDCRITIC.COM
If there's one thing I'm not really very good at, it's guessing a movie's "twist".
Actually, that's not entirely true. If there's ONE thing I'm not really very good at, it's maintaining sobriety. Then again, I'm not very
good at quitting smoking, either. I'm a terrible hockey player, too. And I've got pretty unfortunate hair, and a complete lack of muscle
tone. Plus, it's taking me forever to lose this spare tire of mine...
Okay, let's start again. If there are 20 things I'm not really good at, one of them would be guessing a movie's twist.
Because of this, you're buddy Naked here loves twist-laden movies. "Confidence", "Matchstick Men", and "Primal
Fear"...all movies that made me go "Whoa!"
Spotting the twist isn't, as it turns out, a hereditary talent, either. Thanks to my Mother - Mama Naked - I've got prematurely graying
hair, but I didn't get her knack for spotting these things a mile away. It's frustrating, too, because she'll watch 5 minutes of a movie,
say "Oh, I bet you THIS is going to happen!" and walk out, leaving my Dad and me fuming. She did it with "The Sixth
Sense", telling us assuredly "Oh, I bet you Bruce Willis is a GHOST!" And, speaking of which, she did the same thing in
"Ghost", saying "Oh, I bet you that SMUG guy is up to no good!" And she does all this while being almost completely
un-savvy about other things. She can't set a digital clock, or a VCR, and she's pronounced the word "trilogy" as
"try-OH-lo-jee" for the past 31 years.
So, great. I get the gray hair but I can't see these twists coming.
The reason I bring this up is because, in "Secret Window", I saw the twist coming exactly 2 minutes into the movie. When even I
can see it coming, there's a problem.
"Secret Window" is noteworthy as being roughly the 2387th adaptation of a Stephen King work. Some of these are
fantastic..."The Dead Zone," "The Shining," "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Stand By Me" are some
of the greatest movies I've ever seen. Then again, as a young lad, a couple of my friends and I made a blood oath that we would kill
ourselves before ever sitting through "Maximum Overdrive" again.
"Secret Window" isn't in "Maximum Overdrive" territory as far as SSI (suckage per square inch) goes, but then again,
you never know. If Johnny Depp had been in "Overdrive", maybe it would have been better. Conversely, in Emilio Estevez had been
in "Secret Window", I get the feeling we'd have another "Wrong Turn" review on our hands.
Here, Depp plays Mort Rainey, and hold on to your hats here, kids...he's a WRITER. This makes the 1874th time a Stephen King
hero/protagonist has been a writer.
An aside to Mr. King. Dude, you're a great writer. Can't you make one of these guys an actuary or surgeon or unpaid Internet movie critic
or something? Think about it...it could be a gripping tale of a pudgy, prematurely graying movie critic. After the tragic death of
(insert stock character here), he finds himself alone and unable to cope, when he meets a beautiful, mysterious stranger with a
troubled past. As they fall into a deep spiral of constant sex and sensuality, he learns that ALL is NOT what it seems. One last
tip...write it in the first person, make sure there's a LOT of sex in it, and you could call it "Naked Came I." You're
welcome.
So anyway, as the movie opens, a very troubled looking Mort is sitting in a car outside a motel room. He's talking to himself, and more or
less looks crazy. My first thinking is that he's troubled by the fact that he's got a name like Mort, but it turns out that's NOT why.
Finally, he goes into the motel office, grabs a key, and heads to one of the rooms where he bursts in. There, he sees his wife Amy (Maria
Bello) doing the mommy-daddy dance with some douchebag named Ted (Timothy Hutton). Predictably, he goes apeshit, which to be honest is a
perfectly reasonable reaction to finding out your wife is having sex with Timothy Hutton.
We then fast-forward six months. It seems that Mort has taken the whole thing pretty hard, and moved to his lonely, barren cabin in the
middle of the woods. Because nothing bad EVER happens out there. Here, he's free to work all he wants with no distractions, other than his
cleaning lady.
Unfortunately, the only thing he seems to be working on his a permanent case of bed-head. This guy sleeps a LOT. He spends more of his day
sleeping than I do, which is something that I pin squarely on my ogre of a boss. Yeah, it seems that he takes a dim view of my sleeping for
several hours when I'm in the office. Tyrant. I try to tell him that I'm "concentrating" and "thinking" and
"creating", but he won't have none of it and threatens to "fire" me. I'm telling you...the guy's worse than Saddam.
Anyhoo, the point is that all he seems to do is sleep and eat chips. He hasn't written anything lately, which isn't exactly good news for
us writers, but at least we can get away with it. If we don't work, we can just say "ugh...writer's block." It's not like a
furniture mover can say "Man...I WANTED to move the Smith family today, but I've got Mover's Block."
One morning, Mort gets awakened from nap #23 of the day by a strange, strange man in a pilgrim hat. Not surprisingly, the strange man is
played by John Turturro. He introduces himself as John Shooter, and ominously tells him "Yew stowal mah STOREH!" Translated into
English, it's "You stole my STORY!"
Oh, did I mention that Turturro spends the entire movie speaking with a terrible southern accent? No? Well, he does. It's comical in a way,
but I'm sure it's not supposed to be. Don't get me wrong...Turturro's normally a fantastic actor, but you get the feeling that he went back
to his trailer in between every take and watched "Deliverance" to try and brush up on his hick-speak.
So he drops off the manuscript - which Mort promptly throws into the trash - and threatens Mort, who then copes by going back to sleep.
Yup...this guy's so TIRED that when creepy rednecks show up and accuse him of plagiarism, he deals with it by going down for 40 winks.
Sooner or later, though, he decides to check the manuscript out, and lo and behold, it turns out that the stories are almost identical,
save the ending. Creepy.
Even creepier is the fact that Mort can't be sure that he DIDN'T' steal it. Seems he used to drink a lot, and worse, he's plagiarized
before. This is effective, in that it casts doubts on Mort's character. Not the drinking...I'm TOTALLY on board with that. But I've no
patience for a plagiarizer. Otherwise, I'd just copy-and-paste all of Harry Knowles's reviews.
When they meet again, they face off. And it turns out that Mort's story was PUBLISHED 2 years before Shooter claims he wrote it. He even
tells him the title and date of the magazine that it appeared in. Shooter responds by saying "Wayll, how the HEYLL am I supposta
prewve THAYAT?" (Well, how the hell am I supposed to prove that?) At this point, I had to fight a very strong urge to stand up and
scream "IT'S CALLED A FUCKING LIBRARY, YOU INBRED HICK! OH, SORRY...YOU'RE APPARENTLY RETARDED. IT'S CALLED A LI-BARRY!!!"
So as you can tell, the movie was trying my patience already. Especially since, as I mentioned, I'd already figured out the movie's big
"twist", so I was currently sitting through the hour or so of buildup to it. Besides, as you know, I don't like to talk during
movies.
It's a f*****g shame, then, that I seemed to be the ONLY one nearby who takes other people's enjoyment into consideration. Yup...I had
another a**hole sighting. This time, it was two massive, corpulent blobs of middle-aged flesh sitting across from me. Of course, THESE two
a**holes didn't even have the courtesy to sit in the same ROW. They sat one row apart...all the better to YELL at each other at through the
entire f*****g movie. As an example...about half-way through, Mort calls the new boyfriend Ted a "rubbernecker", because he's
trying to look over shoulders to look at something. Well, these two f*****g idiots thought this was the FUNNIEST thing they'd ever seen!
Every time Ted was on screen, they'd screech "RUBBERNECKER!" When Ted WASN'T on screen, they'd call to each other. "Hey!
Remember when he said RUBBERNECKER! BWAHAHAHA!!!" I swear to Christ, I wanted a gun. It got to the point where the critic sitting in
front of them got up and left out of disgust. I wish I had her willpower.
I can't say they ruined the movie, though. I won't be ruining anything by saying that Shooter's psychotic stalking routine gets
progressively creepier. There's murder, there's violence, there's threats, there's arson...all your standard thriller stuff. Then, the
twist, which I knew was coming.
There's nothing TECHNICALLY wrong with this movie. It's very well directed, with plenty of creepiness and thrills, and some lighter, funny
moments where necessary. The pacing is good, so that it never veers into "boring" territory.
And Depp? Well, he's phenomenal. I've been a fan for years, going right back to his "21 Jump Street" days. This guy could make a
movie where all he does is read the ingredients off the sides of Pringles tubes for 90 minutes, and he could probably pull it off. And he
really does play Mort to perfection...his quirks, his fear, his suspicion, his anger...it's a deeper character than you'd think, but only
because of Depp's performance. He's found levels in this character that wouldn't exist if a lesser actor had played the part. Plus, he
spends a lot of time alone on screen...sometimes talking to himself, sometimes not saying a word, and he pulls it off. You don't take your
eyes off of him. The man is a born actor if ever there was one.
On the other hand, Turturro is terrible. He's not creepy or disturbing...I found myself struggling not to laugh every time he showed up on
screen. Every time he started to drawl a threat, I expected him to say "I'm gonna make you SQUEAL like a pig!"
But it's the story itself that is to blame here. This is one of the few Stephen King stories I've never read, so it's not a matter of
knowing how it ends. It really is the most predictable movie I've seen in a long, long time. And, as a result, even the really GOOD stuff
seemed wasted.
There is a little bit of redemption though, and that's the ending. I refuse to spoil anything, but I will say this...the very end of the
movie is very good and very unexpected. The problem is that you just CAN'T sit through 90 minutes of predictable plot and then rely on a
shocking ending. By the time it came, I was surprised, but at the same time I didn't care.
I hope Koepp and Depp team up again, for two reasons. One, "Koepp and Depp" is a lot of fun to say. Two, with a better, less
predictable story, they could craft a really good thriller.
Who knows...maybe they'll make "Secret Window" a try-OH-lo-jee.
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