MURDER BY NUMBERS (Barbet Schroeder, 2002)

Reviewed: April 21th, 2002

My ambivalence towards Murder By Numbers was gnawing at me for an hour and a half, then finally ended with a conclusive thought: this film's a decent Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode stretched to feature length. Expecting mediocrity at best, aspects of Murder pleasantly surprised me: namely Sandra Bullock's character. Try as I might, I can't fall in love with Sandra Bullock the actress. She's certainly talented, but she's never chosen the material that might allow a love affair to blossom.

Her character in Murder By Numbers -- a lonely, tough, angry detective who wields her sexuality like a billyclub -- is the closest to liftoff our affair has ever achieved. It's not too often a big studio, female star vehicle is comfortable enough in its own skin to allow its leading lady to try something a little different (aka be something other than just a passive, sultry victim). Unfortunately, whenever Bullock gets to do something momentarily interesting with her sex appeal, her character's uniqueness quickly fades into the conventional strong-willed but damaged cop routine background. Worse, Murder By Numbers commits one of the fundamental flaws of moviemaking: providing precise character motivation where none is required and thereby writing off its protagonist.

Character motivation should merely be hinted at. If all the other pieces are in place (as they are in all great films) -- the acting, the situations, the clues, the evolution, the circumstances -- then we don't need to be blatantly told exactly why a character is the way they are. Humans aren't the sum, pat total of one or two events. We are the culmination of a lifetime.

Murder By Numbers is falsely convinced Sandra Bullock is the way she is because she was abused by her husband, who then murdered someone else (I think this is what was said), a belief which is obviously Hollywood horse shit.

Thankfully Murder By Numbers isn't a whodunit, letting us know who the killers are straight away (mixing genre concerns up a bit is always a good thing). Unfortunately, perhaps as substitute, the movie makes its surprise revelation out to be Bullock's said motivation. Constantly hinted at through awful flashbacks and lame suggestions, it's as if the film just couldn't resist revealing something, anything!, with a big, fat, totally unnecessary flourish.

As for the progression of the murder investigation itself: way too much of it is, ironically -- fuck you, I'm going for the pun -- by the numbers. How many times do I have to see an earnest detective's superior try and take him/her off the case?

Critics seem to be making much of the allegedly excellent performances by Murder's young stars, Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt. I wasn't too impressed. They're both strong, but their roles, just like Bullock's, betray them. They're playing rich and wealthy and smart and manipulative kids with absent parents, and so in the struggle to do something meaningful and perhaps prove their superiority, they decide to knock off an innocent victim. Not revolutionary stuff, since they're essentially playing Leopold and Loeb or perhaps Farley Granger and John Dall from Hitchcock's Rope and any additional potential goes thoroughly unexplored.

Numbers is at least fifteen minutes too long and eventually disintegrates into a standard action climax with an obligatory final payoff. Maybe if the film had concentrated on its sexual aspects more -- the sex hidden in the killers' relationship and more explicitly revealed in Bullock's character -- it could have risen above its conformist thriller roots.

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