Wiggly Socks Movie Reviews

By Linda Winsh-Bolard


An accountant working for a large and anonymous firm meets a bewilderingly charming attorney while on the job. The uninhibited attorney is opening new doors for the number crunching drudge. When the attorney leaves for a London assignment, he takes, by a mistake, the accountant’s cell phone with him. Suddenly Jonathan, the repressed accountant, receives alluring phone messages. There is apparently an anonymous sex club, no money, names or conversation ever exchanged; any party can initiate the encounter. The sex is potent, but romance is stronger and Jonathan falls for the wrong girl.

It has all the makings of a film noire. It never comes even close to it. True, they no longer make films like this. Films where few actors carry a story that is straight out of the mystery line, a story nobody will ever live, with all the trimmings from sex to costumes and power.

Unfortunately, film noire or not, it needs to make sense.

From the very beginning we, in the audience, know, that Wyatt Bose (Hugh Jackman) is not for real; we are given, and dully see, the clue. Why doesn’t Jonathan McQuarry (Ewan McGregor) notice, when he is presumably tuned to details?

The decidedly un-hunky Ewan McGregor is, as we learn at the beginning of the story, very smart. He is also very lonely because his job keeps him largely at distance from other people, and there is, as he film implies unwittingly, no other way to meet people but through your job (that might be sadly true for many Americans), but even a very lonely smart accountant doesn’t fall for a girl he glimpses in a subway. For that matter, men wearing $4,000 suits do not ride the subway.

Nor is Jonathan obliged to play the game. In today’s electronically surveyed world, the cell phone alone will give the police all what they need.

All that works against the film, which is a pity because both, Jackman and McGregor do their best for the characters they play.

The film has an indie feeling about it, but like much of the story, it doesn’t really ring true: you do not make an indie film with big names. Big names bring big money, and then those efforts that would be praised in low budged movie, might not be enough- such as camera work. With money comes the technology that makes it easy to produce good-looking picture, and more is expected from cameramen such as Dante Spinotti than adequate subway shots and monochrome palette.

Michelle Williams, in the part of the seductive deceiver “S”, is underwritten and underfed, in all senses. Charlotte Rampling, playing the Wall Street Belle and a member of The List, has the best lines in film; and that is hardly the best you’d expect. Natasha Henstringe and Maggie Q. at least have few lines, the rest of the women are bodies. Bodies contorted by sex, nude and pliant. Somehow it never reaches anything but the shabby, old and seen. Yes, I know the investigative detective is a woman, but it is a tiny and irrelevant part. An erotic film noire has to have strong women. Women with their own agenda. Women with personalities. They are missing, as is any logic. The script is convulsed and unbelievable. From a geek to a man who can easily forged passports, Jonathan, inexplicably falls for the honey trap and then leaves behind millions. That is not hard to believe, that is impossible to even try to overlook. At least Wyatt’s motives are understandable, if his actions are, well, laughable.

It is director’s Marcel Langenegger feature debut, and as he came out of the commercials I would have expected fast tempo, but the film is sluggish at the best. Possibly a story is actually needed to fill 108 minutes.

Directed by Marcel Langenegger; written by Mark Bomback; director of photography, Dante Spinotti; edited by Christian Wagner and Douglas Crise; music by Ramin Djawadi; production designer, Patrizia von Brandenstein; produced by Arnold Rifkin, John Palermo, Hugh Jackman, Robbie Brenner, David Bushell and Christopher Eberts;
Cast: Hugh Jackman (Wyatt Bose), Ewan McGregor (Jonathan McQuarry), Michelle Williams (S), Lisa Gay Hamilton (Detective Russo), Maggie Q (Tina), Natasha Henstridge (Wall Street Analyst), Lynn Cohen (Woman), Danny Burstein (Clute Controller), Malcolm Goodwin (Cabbie), Dante Spinotti (Herr Kleiner/Mr. Moretti), Bill Camp (Clancey Controller), Lisa Kron (Receptionist), Margaret Colin (Ms. Pomerantz) and Charlotte Rampling (Wall Street Belle).