Dark Crimes (2/5)

Dark Crimes takes place in Poland and stars Jim Carrey. As always, Carrey is good when he is dark and serious, but the story in this thriller is just bad.

Dark Crimes looked pretty good based on the trailer. Unfortunately, it’s just not! Besides the fact that I pretty much hate it when everyone speaks English in a non-English speaking country, the acting generally isn’t great.

Sure, everyone – whether from Poland or not – speaks English with a Slavic accent. But really, that just makes everything even stranger. And one person doesn’t have any accent except for her regular posh British one; Charlotte Gainsbourg. Also, when acting opposite Gainsbourg, Carrey’s accent does slip quite a bit as well.

Having said that, Jim Carrey and Charlotte Gainsbourg are definitely the best elements in Dark Crimes.

It definitely isn’t the story!

Also, Marton Csokas delivers a great performance, even if he’s clearly been typecasted. We’ve seen him playing this type of character many times before (XXX, Æon Flux). But hey, he’s just so damn good at it.

What story?

Look, I will admit that I spaced out several times while watching Dark Crimes. It simply could not hold my attention with its many stories that never made much sense. Usually, I adore movies with a more serious Jim Carrey (though I also love when he does comedy). I feel like he is still underappreciated as a “real” actor.

But Dark Crimes really doesn’t do much for him. I mean, sure, he does a great job acting, but I just don’t care. Not about his character or the story or anything else. Much like he seems to not care about anything. Especially his own wife and daughter.

The opening scene is very intense and definitely gets you curious. Also, the final monologue from Charlotte Gainsbourg is brilliant. But that’s about it.

Please don’t have sex!

While watching this movie and wondering where they were going with all this depressing stuff, we had one hope. Basically, it was that two particular characters would not end up having sex. But, of course, they did. That’s probably where I lost all hope of this turning out better than how it had been going so far.

Of course, if you’ve watched some of the previous movies Gainsbourg have done with Lars von Trier, you wouldn’t expect anything less. For me, it really isn’t “cutting edge” or “pushing boundaries” to have her engaged in various sex scenes. I mean, we have quite literally seen it all before.

A real shocker would be someone casting her in a role where she doesn’t have sex.

For the record, I am from Lars von Trier’s native country of Denmark and have a very relaxed attitude towards sex. I just always hate when it becomes a stereotypical plot point. And here we are!

Everything distracts from the story

The story itself is actually interesting, but so much else is going on. You keep getting pulled off track to see how miserable Carrey’s character is or how f*cked up Gainsbourg’s character feels.

And really, why not just move the story to an English speaking country? This whole “Ve speek English vit a Slavic accent, soh you know we are in Pohland” really doesn’t do it for me. Same thing with The Snowman.

Just stop it! These movies very rarely work. When they do, it’s because someone like David Fincher is at the helm. As it was the case with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Even then, the original was at least as good and really needed no remake. I love movies in any language. Just give me subtitles and give the story a chance to star in the movie.

Dark Crimes will be released April 19, 2018 on DIRECTV before opening in theaters and On Demand on May 18.

On October 15, 2019 Dark Crimes was added to Netflix in the US, Germany and other countries.

Details

Director: Alexandros Avranas
Writers: Jeremy Brock (screenplay), David Grann (based on an article by)
Stars: Jim Carrey, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Marton Csokas, Kati Outinen, Vlad Ivanov, Agata Kulesza, Robert Wieckiewicz, Piotr Glowacki

Plot

A murder investigation of a slain business man turns to clues found in an author’s book about an eerily similar crime. Based on the 2008 article “True Crimes – A postmodern murder mystery” by David Grann.