Out of Blue

Adapted from a not very good novel, Night Train by Martin Amis.

This existential noir mystery would had been better in the capable hands of someone like David Lynch.

Patricia Clarkson plays hard boiled detective Mike Hoolihan. A man's name for a detective operating in a man's world of New Orleans.

Mike is investigating the death of Jennifer Rockwell (Mamie Gummer) an astrophysicist shot in the head in the observatory she worked at.

Rockwell was the daughter of a decorated Vietnam war veteran and businessman, Tom Rockwell (James Caan.)

The suspects range from her colleagues, boyfriend, her father to a one time notorious serial killer. It could also just be suicide.

With all the mumbo jumbo of time and space, we see that Mike is losing her sense of self. The death of Jennifer has had a pronounced effect on her.

The film loses all coherent sense as it goes along and it just gets more uninteresting. A shame as somewhere there was a good film trying to break out if only it had a better livelier script.

This movie is like buying the best ingredients and making an awful cake of it. Actors are fine. The plot line is interesting and promising. They grab some very fascinating and potent subjects like Existence and absurdity of life, Schrödinger's cat, stardust... The twist is there. But put all together it simply does not work.

One of the most insignificant films ever made....The acting was minimal. This film will be viewed in the future as dated, if anyone ever even sees this boring film!

I watched the whole thing. Partially out of boredom, but also because it was weirdly interesting to see the full measure of a real piece of crap that had some fine ingredients used so poorly the final product is almost camp.

First, Patricia Clarkson is her marvelous self. Don't tell me she doesn't know how to act or produce a solid character. This is indeed a mystery. Some of the flashbacks won't make sense until the end. This movie is slow and methodical. If you're looking for chase scenes or the big "gotcha," your not going to find it. There are plenty of tracks to go down. Most lead to dead ends but have you thinking it's the right one. It's not a box office hit, but it certainly is worth watching on DVD or wherever you get your movies.