More Lynch than Finch(er)

andidektor

I was expecting a much more violent movie and was grimly surprised that WAZ mainly uses mood and tone to take us to a very dark place indeed. Admittedly, the last act is straight out of the torture porn manual (in setting if not graphic detail), but up to then WAZ creates a surreal, edgy world that evokes David Lynch much more than David Fincher. It's a bizarre police procedural by any measure, much more a descent into chaos, with all the normal points of reference for an audience falling away piece by piece.

The perpetrator is revealed almost matter-of-factly. The one suspect - creepy Paul Kaye - seems to exist only to move the narrative another step away from the familiar; and the denouement, a messed up triumph for Stellan Skarsgård's sullied passion, is as dirty and dark as the city he prowls by eternal night.

Skarsgård carries a heavy, existential weight throughout. His tough, seedy detective rasps unintelligibly at times, but he's magnetic and never definable. That he would rather finish it forever than betray his seemingly worthless and lonely passion is probably the most far-fetched twist in Clive Bradley's script, but Skarsgård pulls it off. Selma Blair is truly scary (justifiably so, according to the unpleasant rape flashback); and Tom Hardy gives sleazy support and context to the extremes of Skarsgård's character – he's pretty close to the precipice, but he's not the only one. Melissa George, with permanently gaping lips and a fixed, bewildered frown is the weakest element in the mix. She doesn't really make the journey with Skarsgård, retaining her irritating pout no matter what.

The dark, empty cityscape may in part have been the necessary product of a very low budget, but Tom Shankland makes of it a no-man's land close to hell, where bad things happen and keep on happening. The mood is oppressive, unremitting – and although sometimes it shows a digital sheen, Morten Søborg's expressionistic cinematography is superb throughout.

Sometimes the lack of budget shows in the production design. Too often there is one "American" item in view that attracts much more of the action than it should (nice icebox, let's talk here); do all addicts and hoods really hang sheets of plastic up in their crack dens?; and does every police precinct building in NY have its own in-house morgue (or did I blink and miss something?). Also, if I was NYPD, I'd definitely interview the graffiti artist who has left his signature scribble at almost every location.

Tom Shankland, his production team and a mostly excellent cast have managed to craft a genuinely unsettling film here. Making a virtue of very limited resources is obviously the way to overcome them, and to rise above the expectations of the procedural format to create a mood piece as effective as this bodes well for Shankland's next genre outing, "The Day".

score 8/10

andidektor 25 May 2008

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1880017/