Discovering certain seemingly innocuous social, cultural or media trends and extrapolating them to extreme is a simple way to create basic plots for science fiction or futuristic films. Crimetime, 1996 British film directed by George Sluizer, does so with the increasing popularity of true crime television. Set in England in near future, the film deals with a show which features graphic reconstructions of real crimes. Val (played by Sadie Frost), an actress playing victims in those shows, talks her boyfriend, unemployed American actor Bobby Mahon (played by Stephen Baldwin) to take part in one of them. He takes the role of a serial killer that picks women, kills them and takes their eyes out. Producers like his performance and so does the killer named Sydney (played by Pete Postlethwaite) who, in order to continue see his work on television, makes each new killing more elaborate and gruesome. Bobby, in the meantime, becomes great star but continues taking his job very seriously, studying each crime in detail and inquiring police investigators about each new bit of information. However, his attempts to dive into killer’s character would soon reach pathological levels.
Crimetime was directed by George Sluizer, Dutch film maker whose 1988 film The Vanishing is considered to be one of the best and most innovative European thrillers of its time. His attempt to continue career in Hollywood failed due to his subpar American remake). Sluizer later accused meddling of Hollywood studio executives for such failure, claiming that they forced him to change the powerful ending of the original. While he apparently didn’t have such problems during British production of Crimetime, he was burdened with bad script by Brendan Sommers. Interesting idea to explore blurred lines between entertainment, news and crime was ultimately compromised by poorly written characters and many unconvincing details of the plot. Sluizer doesn’t help with directing style that makes tempo very slow. Actors try their best, but their efforts are mostly in vain. What saves Crimetime from total disaster is black humour, although at times it looks those scenes weren’t written as humorous. One of the more entertaining moments features Sadie Frost flashing her breasts on the street or American actress Karen Black trying to master British accent. Those moments are too few and far in between for Crimetime to be recommended to anyone except masochistically curious viewers.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
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