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I’m
sorry to tell you, but if you have read the rest of the column,
you’ll be dead in seven days.
But
that won’t bother DreamWorks… they’ve got a legitimate hit
on their hands. And they won’t need Tom Hanks to get
them to $100 million. All
they have is a discount Nicole Kidman.
(Sorry, Naomi… I’ve been calling for your stardom since
you outshined Lori Petty in Tank Girl, but you
need to find a way to separate yourself from your Nicole-ness…
it is almost jarring at times in this movie.) But they also happen to have a director, Gore
Verbinski, working right in his wheelhouse and an old-fashioned
piece of storytelling that is terribly original in this era
of quick cuts and short fuses.
The Ring is this year’s The Others with a bigger
launch.
I
don’t want to tell you a single thing about the story and
I would suggest that if you don’t want to know that you be
very, very careful about reading reviews before you see the
movie. Not knowing
any more than the trailer and ads told me was one of the joys
of the experience.
What
I will tell you is this.
Watts does the job… even if she does look eerily like
a shorter Nicole. Seeing
Jane Alexander was thrilling for me and I am looking
forward to some great performances now that she is an “old
lady.” Many of her affectations as an actress are
gone and she is ready to become a Jessica Tandy with
a heavyweight punch. Also,
Brian Cox turns up and, damn it, in a very small role,
he actually outdoes Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter
performance in Red Dragon. Really great work.
And
then there is Verbinski.
This director showed enormous promise with light material
in Mouse Hunt and then got kind of bogged down with
a less interesting screenplay for The Mexican. Verbinski is a stylist and he shouldn’t be
making straight-up star vehicles.
His Pirates of the Carribean should be a party.
Here, he shows a level of restraint that is as compelling
as his moments of high drama.
With the right material, Verbinski is a director who
can deliver.
$36.5 million for Red Dragon was an October record. The record is meant to be broken. This weekend.
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