FILM REVIEW: RED LIGHTS

RED LIGHTS (15)

Starring: Cillian Murphy, Robert De Niro, Sigourney Weaver, Elisabeth Olsen, Joely Richardson, Craig Roberts.

Director: Rodrigo Cortes

Running time: 113 minutes

Released 15th June (UK)  / 17th July (US)

Released by:Versus

Margaret Matheson (Weaver) and Tom Buckley (Murphy) divide their time between teaching classes at the local university that examine the way hucksters fake paranormal events and investigating such events themselves.  Each have their own agendas for exposing frauds for what they are. As Matheson tells her students, she'd be willing to believe in the paranormal if - in thirty years - she'd come across any event that defied more mundane explanations. In her view, there are always the 'red lights', the giveways that things ae not what they seem.

When reclusive psychic Simon Silver (De Niro) announces he's coming out of retirement, Buckley sees the opportunity to test one of the most infamous mentalists in the business. Silver's been a recluse for years - an investigating journalist out to expose him died at one of his tapings and Silver's been away from public view ever since - but the media quickly latches on to what could be a million-dollar come-back for the showman. Matheson's not interested. She's come across him before, when he exploited the fact that her son is in a brain-dead coma, and warns Buckly that while she's convinced he's a fake, he's also a dangerous and resourceful man to be crossed.

Buckley ignores her and then , for very personal reasons, decides to bring him down at all costs. The problem is that it appears that Silver is a man of many resources and very strange things begin to happen around Buckley and those he loves. The stage is set for a very public showdown...

There's a certain sense of ambition to the story and the first half of Red Lights keeps us interested, not over-playing its hand and keeping its own counsel as to where its secrets lie. It's a fine line to walk, but we're not sure if Silver is a dangerous supernatural force or merely an astute and ruthless charlatan. That's not to say that - like the title could infer - there aren't danger signs that this could all veer off track.  Sadly, this is yet another entry in the ever-swelling ranks of films that have interesting set-ups yet stumbling third-acts.

If you believe the adverts running on UK television then Red Lights is the new The Sixth Sense. This is a dangerous boast to make and one setting a benchmark from which the film falls considerably short. The classic M Night Shyamalan/Bruce Willis feature was a tour-de-force at hiding its spooky truths in plain sight (and then watching audiences go back and see how the dots were joined). Red Lights, with a quite different scenario, can argue that it leaves some narrative breadcrumbs throughout, but the difference is that while there's SOME logic to the conclusion based on these, everything else around it rings less true. The central  idea is fine, but the supporting structure gets more precarious and less convincing as we progress.  By the end, instead of a clearly intended 'Oh, wow!', it's more 'Oh, really?'. Audiences are unlikely to want to re-watch the movie for an ending that isn't satisfying. That end will divide the audience. My opinion would be that it goes for style over substance, effects over cause and lighting over logic. It lacks Sense's sense or impact. 

Over-all, Red Lights feels like a potentially solid premise but filmed from a script that needed several more drafts before being ready for the screen. De Niro's menacing mentalist simply doesn't have any of the real gravitas we're consistently told he has - his 'act' on screen looking particularly hokey and lacking charisma (especially towards the end). Is he a clairvoyant, a psychic healer, a mind-reader or a simple spoon-bender... the film seems unwilling to paint his character in anything other than pale paranormal broad-strokes and cliches. While some scenes in the first half build the tension very well indeed and promise much, they are off-set by other scenes that border on the silly or pure melodramatic. The dialogue is also somewhat flat, dripping in portentous tones, but sometimes merely for the hell of it. While its quick-cut camera-work works well for mood, there's little content to back it up and if ever a film could be described as 'uneven', this is one of them.

Murphy and Weaver are fine with what basic material they are given and they play the film's initial slow-burn mystery pretty well. However the script tends to have them emphasising the very weaknesses it should be avoiding.  "Where did you come from?" she asks him at one point. The question is left hanging unsubtley in the air with a virtual sign that screams 'We're coming back to this later!'   Several actors - Richardson (as Silver's assistant), Olsen (as Buckley's love-interest) and Roberts (as a tech-wise student) most noticeably - might as well not be there at all , their roles so sketchily written and apparently superfluous to proceedings that you presume their presence must be leading up to more - and yet they don't get the onscreen pay-offs they need. They are simply padding and it shows, badly.  Even those supporting actors given more focus such as Toby Jones, feel like caricatures there to serve the plot.

In the end Red Lights, directed by Rodrigo Cortes, does not firmly pass go and is a missed opportunity that could have been saved with more due care and attention. Cortes does the visual side well, but less so the words. Instead we have a film that I'll predict will do mediocre box-office (out in the UK now, a limited release in the US next month) and be rushed to DVD before the end of the year.

2/5