(re)search my Trash

<body> <div align="left"> <table border="0" cellspacing="0" width="800" cellpadding="0" height="100%"> <tr> <td width="100" rowspan="3" background="../stylepix/square.gif" valign="top">  </td> <td width="4" rowspan="3"></td> <td width="592" height="1%" valign="top">  </td> <td width="4" rowspan="3"></td> <td width="100" rowspan="3" background="../stylepix/squareright.gif" valign="top">  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="592" valign="top" height="99%">   <p>Some country in Central America on the verge of some coup d'état or other, you know the kind:</p> <p>A Talmudic rabbi is killed in a hotel, and everything points to a jewelry heist gone wrong, because a rich jeweller is staying just next door - but much to the dismay of his superior, Commissioner Treviranus (Miguel Sandoval), investigating detective Lonnrot (Peter Boyle) dismisses the idea and looks for a "more rabbinic explanation", trying to solve the whole thing with the help of the Talmud, the Kabbalah, the last name of God, and building it up to a big conspiracy - and the only one who seems to support his theories is the journalist and Talmudic scholar Zunz (Christopher Eccleston).</p> <p>Soon, a second murder is committed, the crook turned politician Azevedo, and this time everything points to super-criminal Red Scharlach, who has a personal grudge against Lonnrot after he killed Scharlach's brother. However, Lonnrot dismisses the idea of Red Scharlach's involvement and soon finds more evidence to link the murder to his kabballistic conspiracy theory.</p> <p>Then a man disappears from a run-down hotel in the seedy part of town, and once again it seems to fit in with Lonnrot's theory - he thinks the missing man will be used as human sacrifice -, even though there is little evidence that the missing person actually even existed in the first place.</p> <p>Eventually a fortune teller (Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez) shows up in Lonnrot's office, opening his eyes to the geometric aspect of the three murders ... and soon enough, Lonnrot has figured out when and where the next murder will be committed - in an abandoned mansion in the middle of nowhere -, and he rushes there to prevent it, accompanied only by journalist Zunz. But once in the mansion, he finds nothing - until Zunz reveals himself to be Red Scharlach, who had made up the whole kabbalistic conspiracy - after the first murder was already committed by someone else - only to lure Lonnrot to him and to have his revenge on his own turf ... and yes, ultimately Red Scharlach and his gang shoot Lonnrot, who has fallen prey to his own preposterous intellect that couldn't accept the death of a rabbi as the thing it was - a jewelry heist gone wrong ...</p> <p> </p> <p>A fascinating and darkly humourous murder mystery that makes clever use of all kinds of elaborate conspiracy theories only to completely dismiss them at the end. Director Alex Cox brings the story to life quite beautifully by placing it in a fleshed-out parallel world on the brink of revolution the characters seem to be weirdly unaware of - a world he catches in long shots with a fluidly moving camera and in which the lead characters quite comicbook-like are always dressed in primary colours - and as a matter of fact, most actors even look a little bit like their own caricatures in the first place. An in this parallel world of his, director Cox effortlessly mixes the story of highly acclaimed writer Jorge Luis Borges it is based on with pulp elements as if they belonged to each other.</p> <p>This all leads to a weird and quite unique piece of crime cinema that is highly recommended !!!</p> <p>  </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="592" valign="top" height="1%">  <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> currentyear = "2007"; </SCRIPT> <SCRIPT language="JavaScript" src="../scripts/endcredits.js"></SCRIPT> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> dosworsdonn(); </SCRIPT> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </body>