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Nov 02, 2009Michael rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
FIVE FINGERS, is one of the best films I’ve seen this year! Having watched it and enjoyed it thoroughly – I’m surprised it only has 24 people on the OPL waiting list to see it! It’s either because the film’s cast just doesn’t do it for some peeps (let’s face it - Ryan Phillippe isn’t as sexy a catch anymore without being Reese Witherspoon’s hubby… and Lawrence Fishburne without Keanu Reeve’s Neo… well, we’ve seen him on TV trying to fill Gil Grissom’s shoes on CSI… it ain’t happenin’ - big time!) But get by the play on words implied by the film’s title – that it could have been about a five-finger exercise, as in “tefting” – a misdirectional reference to thefting a million bucks - and quickly accept also that it’s no FIVE EASY PIECES, one of my favourite Jack Nicholson movies of all time (he’s had so many great flicks, hasn’t he - back when he was a genius actor and not just an over-weight dirty old man?). And brush off the incidence that like the Nicholson classic, this too has a troubled pianist who needs more than psychological comfort from a beautiful companion to cure what ails him. Then - you are free to experience all the suspense about to be perpetrated upon you! The acting is superb from everyone involved in this modern day film noir, especially the film’s two main protagonists: Phillippe who plays Martyn, a Dutch piano player- cum-banker who has a misbegotten million dollars that he has difficulty accounting for to his would-be Arab terrorist abductors, lead by Fishburne as Ahmat, an ersatz chess player-everything, who is brutally ruthless in his torture techniques beyond what some North American sensitivities normally can stomach. Don’t let that little revolting revelation stop you from seeing this film, though, because I think this is the best cat-and-mouse drama that I’ve seen since Sir Lawrence Olivier had a go at a very very young Michael Caine in the 1972 murder mystery SLEUTH. It has so many twists and turns, some obvious (or at least you think they are) some so layered and complex you’ll have to watch and listen carefully to catch the contradictions and charades – and I guarantee you an ending you weren’t expecting, for a change, when you get to it. And it comes quickly – the movie is only just over 80 minutes. But who needs longer to get to the truth of a matter so apparently surreal as it unfolds, that it’ll have you questioning your belief systems about just what the hell is going on out there in the world, as we North Americans waffle down another Big Mac sandwich supersized with fries and a shake?! And that’s another guarantee I’m making you, right now… you’re going to want to think twice about fast food choices even more after this movie – but not for any reason you can possibly imagine before hand – you’ll see! This is not a boring flick – you might be lulled into a false sense of meandering romance both by the movie’s initially intimate moments between Martyn and his Moroccan girlfriend, and by his apparent romantic view of the world’s starving children that he says he wants to help with the mysterious million bucks. But it’s innocently nuanced only until the first powerful shock hits. After that – better hold on to your seat. You’ll be in for a whole bunch of others, until the movie leaves you spent by its definitive yet unforgiving ending!