The Cry of the Owl

Considine is Brilliant in this Psychological Thriller
The Cry of the Owl is a slow-boiling psychological thriller that doesn't offer the nonstop suspense that "Seven" might, but still delivers by the film's end.

The movie is based on a 1962 novel by Patricia Highsmith, who also wrote the novel that "The Talented Mr. Ripley" film was based on. Cry of the Owl was eventually shot as a movie in 1987 by a French director, and was finally re-shot in Canada in 2009. What stands out about this version is the cast, which includes Julia Stiles and British actor Paddy Considine.

I've long been a fan of Considine, and he plays the neurotic Robert Forrester brilliantly. I've seen Considine in a number of roles where he plays an assertive character, so it's interesting to see him as a shell of a man and something of a coward. This was also my first introduction to the stunningly beautiful Caroline Dhavernas, who plays Forrester's sadistic ex-wife.

The plot overview for this movie by Amazon is a bit sensational,...

Low-Key Visual Essay on Fate and Fatality
You can tell this is a Canadian-made movie, even apart from the skyline shot of Toronto and the nationality of the actors. You can tell it's Canadian by the almost modest, unassuming way in which the murder unfolds.

Then too, any murder or murder plot is almost secondary in the film. This is more a visual essay about coming to a crossroads, about the fatefulness of going in one direction rather than the other. It's about how we start out taking in life from one perspective, then end up starring back at that person we used to be.

There are several of these telling reversals in the film. The man who starts out being a sort of harmless stalker ends up being harmlessly stalked. The watcher ends up being watched.

This film might almost be a bit too low-key for many American audiences, and Paddy Considine, the lead actor, might come across as being almost too unprepossessing and inarticulate. But "Cry of the Owl" leaves a wistful trace of wondering in the...

Lives of Quiet Desperation
The novels of Patricia Highsmith have been turned often into cinema with varying degrees of success: "Strangers on a Train"; "Purple Noon"; "The Talented Mr. Ripley". So I was intrigued by this, a Highsmith story with which I was not familiar. The two lead actors, Paddy Considine & Julia Stiles, share a "Bourne" connection: Julia of course, played 'Nicky' in all three Bourne movies, Considine's best-known role is probably that of the tabloid journalist that gets gunned down in a London train station in an early setpiece in "Bourne Ultimatum". Here, Considine regrettably quashes his native English accent as Robert Forrester, a man who has just gone through a bitter divorce & moves to a small, unnamed town & takes a new job to get away from associations of his ex-wife. Though the nondescript locations are meant to suggest the Midwest (Highsmith set it in Pennsylvania), one can tell by the accents of the supporting actors that it was actually filmed in Canada.

Robert is...

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