The Big Empty

This is a movie that tries to be cliched. That's a little weird because most if not all movies try to be different. A lot don't get to be, but they try, and would certainly like to be. Not this one. Why would a movie want to be just like the same thing we've seen a hundred times before? To prove that it can be done better. Nicer shots, cooler characters, better scenery, and a stranger mystery. The Big Empty succeeds on some of these grounds. The shots are terrific and so is the scenery. But the rest of it is bizarre. The main character is a tiresome, beat up kind of guy and yet he's young. He never smiles and probably doesn't know the meaning of fun. The case he gets involved in starts out just like the classic cases of movies like Chinatown and then gets really weird. I think the point of this movie was to take classic formulas and see if they could vary them to such a degree that we would never expect it. The detective is usually a cool, tough talking, never smiling, experienced guy. Here he's tough talking and never smiling, but he is far from cool and completely inexperienced. So it's sort of a spoof on detective stories. A black comedy. On the grounds that it is creative it works. But the story is certainly not that good and overall it is just okay.