| This week's Tribune review : WΔZ [5/10] |
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| Sunday, 17 February 2008 | |
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WΔZ UK/US 2006/7 Starring : Stellan Skarsgård, Melissa George Director : Tom Shankland ------------------------------------------- IT'S enormously tempting to describe WAZ - or, to be pedantic, WΔZ (i.e. W-Delta-Z) as (Darren Aronofsky's) Pi to the power of (David Fincher's) Se7en, although such an "equation" doesn't really fit this uneven, ostentatiously nasty serial-killer thriller. There's more than an element of Saw in there also, and it's surely no coincidence that WAZ is, sort-of kind-of, Saw spelled backwards. As in the Saw sequels, there's little attempt to hide the identity of the killer - and, as with the diabolically inventive Jigsaw, WΔZ's Jean Learner (Selma Blair) doesn't actually perform the killings herself, although to say any more would be to spoil what meagre suspense and mystery the picture manages to generate. For most of its running-time, WΔZ is a pseudo-gritty police-procedural in the hand-held-camera, hard-boiled-dialogue traditions of recent American television. The focus is on yet another pair of mismatched cops: grizzled veteran Eddie (Skarsgård) and glamorous greenhorn Helen (Melissa George), who form an uneasy partnership as they try to work out a chain of messy killings among New York's drug-and-gun infested underworld - all of the victims turning up with the eponymous equation carved into their flesh. Crucial to the case is strutting street-thug Daniel (Ashley Walters) - whom Eddie seems unusually keen to shelter from both the authorities and the murderously vengeful Jean... WΔZ takes a little getting used to at first - the cameraman seems to have a bad case of ADHD, while the cast's "American" accents are a constant distraction (only Blair is a true-blue, genuine Yank), with Skarsgård growling out his lines like some kind of semi-Scandinavian Nick Nolte. The dialogue is also something of an obstacle to effectiveness, veering between hand-me-down tough-guy top talk and cod-scientific verbiage as the intricacies of the case start to emerge. And the plot is somewhat over-complicated - the killer's underlying revenge motive would have been enough on its own, without dragging in behavioural psychology and blackboards full of equations. For all that, WΔZ - though fundamentally straight-to-video fare - does remain surprisingly watchable throughout. Skarsgård, when we can hear what he's saying, invests his chain-smoking character with a persuasively grave world-weariness; Belfast doubles unexpectedly convincingly for Manhattan, and there's a rather deft final "twist" that concludes the bloody shenanigans on a reasonably effective and thought-provoking note. Neil Young |
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