It is the world we live in now, any person can say anything about a movie even if what they say makes no sense. Like here, the first day of release streaming on Prime, one so-called review establishes an account and trashes it and gives it a "1" rating. Which is totally absurd and misleading. Makes me wonder the motive.
We are seeing many mediocre to bad "made for streaming" movies but this is not one of those. In fact it is a cut above most of them. The actors are good and while there aren't many really novel ideas here it is suspenseful and the last 30 minutes or so reveal a few surprises.
It reminds me of the old 1940s and 1950s detective movies where a Private Investigator is hired to sort out what really happened. Was it really an accident? Or was it murder? Shot in beautiful area of Crete, Greece.
As the movie opens we see a death in the first minute, it is a 30-something man free climbing a cliff in a public assessable area but only by boat. He seems about 2/3 of the way up when he falls, the investigative report estimates he fell about 30 meters, which for us Americans is about 100 feet. The quick investigation rules it an accident but how would they know how high up he was? From the brief glimpse we don't really have much of a clue.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (early 40s) is a Greek-American private investigator Nick Bali. He is hired by Shailene Woodley (early 30s) as Penelope Vardaki. The dead climber is her brother-in-law, she is married to his identical twin brother, of the wealthy Greek shipping family of the area. She secretly approaches Nick, she hires him to investigate the death because she strongly suspects that it was murder, not an accident, but keep her involvement quiet. We quickly find out there was some tension between the twin brothers.
The movie is made in the style with ongoing narration by Nick, basically telling us what he is thinking and what he suspects. I like both Gordon-Levitt and Woodley and both are excellent in their roles. The cinematography makes good use of the local scenery.
As with most movies nowadays there are few novel ideas, however we watch a movie like this to be entertained and my wife and I found it entertaining. Curiously, we each watched it at different times in different cities. Golf trip...
