Despite being touted by the press as the 21st-century Taxi Driver when it was released in France, Lynne Ramsey's overly stylized work is nothing more than an anti-genre experiment with mixed reviews. The film won Best Actor and Best Screenplay at Cannes last year, and there's no need to say much about Joaquin Phoenix's superb performance, and the screenplay, in my opinion, really isn't a success. The rough and omitted script cannot fully shape the character. The hero part can still use flashback clips to let the audience piece together his past family background and painful experiences in their minds. The clue of the hero and the little girl is unclear. The handling is undoubtedly regrettable. There are only two or three scenes before and after that cannot make people appreciate the progressive development of the relationship between each other, and the most critical turning point is not convincing (why did the actor give up his life to save the girl?). It's easy to see that the director is trying to subvert the audience's expectations for the same genre, portraying the killer's frail character, swapping the relationship between the two in "This Killer is Not Too Cold", refusing to show violence head-on, and blending into the noirism of the Coen brothers. The sense of humor (the actor holding hands with another killer before he dies) is a refreshing and bold attempt. Not to mention the director's usual authoritative label: sharp flashback editing, inspiring electronic soundtrack, psychologically suggestive color set. However, the pale and concise narrative is about to be submerged in the overly dazzling image style, which makes the anti-type experiment unable to give full emotional touch, which is the biggest flaw of the film.
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