Wicker Park: Movie & DVD Review (2004)
(Originally published 2004)
“Wicker Park,” the astonishingly stupid, convoluted remake of the 1996 French thriller, “L’Appartement,” attempts to press audiences into the grooves of a non-linear story, one that’s so fractured, it breaks onscreen.
As directed by Paul McGuigan from Brandon Boyce’s script, the movie tries for substance, but it never reaches below the surface. It’s weightless, dim-witted treacle. People run the gammet of emotions here, but with characters so poorly formed, the impact of their tears, fears, worries, rage and joy is only marginally felt.
In the movie, Josh Hartnett is Matt, a successful, up-and-coming young businessman about to leave Chicago for Shanghai. On the verge of being engaged to the tart, smart Rebecca (Jessica Pare), Matt is seemingly on the right track when his world is suddenly derailed by another woman.
Indeed, into his life crosses who appears to be the former love of his life, Lisa (Diane Kruger of “Troy”), who mysteriously dumped Matt two years before and then vanished without a word to London.
Without knowing for certain that it’s Lisa he sees rushing from a tony restaurant, Matt is on a mission to find out. Dumping the Shanghai trip, he launches into action, with the movie itself launching back and forth in time in an effort to explain how their relationship went wrong.
Along the way, we meet Matt’s kooky best friend, Luke (Matthew Lillard), and Luke’s creepy girlfriend, Alex (Rose Byrne, also of “Troy”), both of whom add to the considerable (and implausible) twists and turns McGuigan shoehorns into the plot.
“Wicker Park” wants to work by evasion, but it doesn’t generate interest in what it withholds. It wants to keep us off balance and it wants to keep us moderately confuses--that it succeeds is no help. And it’s certainly no compliment.
The film’s lack of structure sucks it of momentum. For its first two-thirds, it has no logic, just throwaway, artistic whims by a director who doesn’t have the finesse to see them through. When its story finally does come together in a crowded airport, it’s too late to care. By that point, this disappointing, hollow movie already has been halfway around a world of nowhere.
Grade: D
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