Customer Reviews

Murderous Intent

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

For some strange reason the very fine Australian/British film LIKE MINDS underwent a name change and hit the US market as MURDEROUS INTENT. The original title is so much more apropos of the story: the alternate title tends to make the audience pass over 'just another death film' category that prevents this excellent little film from appealing to a wide audience. Writer/Director Gregory J. Reed and his talented cast and production staff deserve better as this is a stunning psychological drama well worth seeing.

The setting is an all boys' prep school and among the students is Alex (a very fine young Eddie Redmayne) who happens to be the son of the headmaster (Patrick Malahide) and is a brilliant scholar - if somewhat of a troublemaker at the same time. Into this setting arrives a new student Nigel (an equally fine young Tom Sturridge) who is a darkly quiet, malevolent, bright lad preoccupied with history and necrophilia. The two boys are placed together as roommates, much to Alex's objections, and gradually secrets are unraveled that show how the two boys become, via gestalt, a sum of evil greater than its parts. Alex is horrified and yet fascinated with the ritual-influenced deaths that begin to occur and when Nigel himself is murdered, Alex is the blamed.

Enter the police: McKenzie (Richard Roxburgh) arrests and charges Alex with murder, but requires substantiation from a forensic psychologist Sally (the always superb Toni Collette). Sally interviews Alex, observes his behavior and manages to get inside his mind, learn about the historical data that has directed the evil from her astute questioning sessions with Alex, and begins to follow her own intuition about the case. There are twists and turns, flashbacks to incidents, investigation details, and discoveries bordering on the occult that spin this dark yarn like a helix of fear. The ending will surprise the viewer.

The script is superb, the acting is top notch, the production design is accomplished and the musical score by Carlo Giacco is simply brilliant. This is a fine art film, graced by the quality of superior acting set by Collette, and is a tense drama that will keep an audience thinking and involved to the final credits. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, August 07

Why is it that only the British and Australians can bring this kind of intense mysterious suspense film to life and breathe into it the essence that carries you along for the ride. The young cast is perfectly placed in their parts. And if Tom Sturridge doesn't ignite some teenage hearts with his looks and become a big star there is no justice...especially since he can act his way out of several paper bags at once. Toni Collete by no means lets the young men surrounding her steal anything away from her screen presence and her performance resonates with the deep abiding fear that begins to grow in the back of her mind as she investigates this murder, if indeed that's what it is. I won't dwell on the plot because it spoils the fun. Eddie Redmayne has to carry the crux of the story and this fine young actor never lets you down. Everybody is spot on including one of my favorite old pros - Patrick Malahide. For suspense that builds until you slip off the edge of your seat...see this one.

Gregory J. Read's Like Minds, aka Murderous Intent, is one of those would-be ambitious low-budget psychological thrillers that makes for a better trailer than a film, with forensic psychiatrist Toni Collette trying to discover whether egotistical public schoolboy Eddie Redmayne is really responsible for the shooting of his sociopathic 'best friend' Tom Sturridge. Gestalt and the spectre of unhealthily attracted like minds like Leopold and Loeb and Hindley and Brady are evoked, but the script is really too trite and unfocused to make any dramatic capital out of them, while the references to the Masons, Thomas Becket, the Cathars and the Knights Templar are simultaneously vague and crushingly heavy-handed. Rather than showing the growing compulsion that draws the two boys together, the film oh so flatly tells us with excessive narration as if trying to paper over the cracks in post-production and hide the fact there's no on screen connection between the pair. Depending heavily on only assuming one character's point of view to build up its damp squib of a final twist, it's the kind of film where poor writing ensures that not only are the psychology and theology barely even half-baked at best but that the characters are too, and it falls into the trap of demonstrating the youths' supposed superior intellect by only putting them up against stupid people. But then this is a film where so much defies the suspension of disbelief - in one sequence, on discovering that Sturridge is filling his room with dissected dead animals, Patrick Malahide's headmaster insists his son continue to share the room with him because he's intellectually challenging company (and his parents might help him get on in his Masonic lodge).

An Anglo-Australian co-production, it's a curious hybrid: the schoolboys and teachers are played by Brits but all the cops are Australian (as, very noticeably, are the trains) and the look of the film is equally schizophrenic. The police station and interrogation scenes have an impressively controlled use of visual symmetry, but the public school sequences seem visually mundane and overfamiliar in comparison. More of a problem is Read's handling of the cast. Aside from her memorably amateurish delivery of the line "Your dirty work!", Collette is fine in her undeveloped role and Malahide almost manages to make his character convincing despite the odds, but the other players are more problematic: neither of the boys have much screen personality, let alone the kind of compelling presence the roles cry out for (Sturridge is especially ineffectual as the supposed master manipulator), while Richard Roxburgh's increasingly desperate (read clichéd) cop seems little more than a bad impersonation of Sean Pertwee. Ultimately it never adds up to anything, which wouldn't be a problem if the film could inject some drama, ambiguity or unease into proceedings, but since it never does, the film just constantly falls flat as it wastes screen time en route to its predictable final revelation.

I have read a lot of things online about people not understanding the ending of this movie, and I'm not positive I fully grasp it myself. I will assure you that you should watch it at least twice, I caught many things I didn't the first time.

I think a few things in this movie were a bit rushed, for instance the gestalt theory which this entire film is essentially based on is not fully explained and is hard to understand, making the movie difficult to grasp since it is so central to the whole thing.
In addition, I don't believe they developed Alex's character enough to fit the sociopathic tendencies they were claiming he had. The whole point of the movie was that both of these boys had these tendencies, but would not have acted upon them had they not met each other. That they fueled each other. It is obvious Nigel leaned toward the sociopath description, with the animals and the fascination with death etc. But where did Alex fit in? So he was troubled, his mother died and he dad didn't pay attention to him, this means he has sociopath tendencies? I just don't see it.
I think they may have missed the mark by a bit, but the overall idea is very interesting and original. The acting is superb and Tom Sturridge (Nigel) is absolutely gorgeous and..freaky..

I overall enjoyed the film.
I may have missed the mark on the interpretation as well, who knows? many have said this is one of those movies that was meant to be pondered, leaving you empty and trying to figure out what it all meant. I'm not so sure, but I say its worth buying used and finding out for yourself.

I've read many reviews on this movie where people did not understand the ending.
Personally, I don't think you were meant to understand the movie in one go, so if you are looking for a quick blood and fix, this isn't the movie for you. It's not going to happen. Sorry.
The two characters in this movie use various things that bond them together, Gestalt theory, the Knight Templars, Beckett, Cathars etc. You really have to follow along with the movie. It's not one where you can skip around and expect to understand.
Another thing that I think most people miss while they are watching, is that the veiwer is hearing the story from Alex's (Eddie Redmayne) point of veiw, and his point of view only. A 17 year old boy charged with murders...makes you wonder.
Watching this movie four times through now (I've had it about six months and I absolutely can't get enough of it) I noticed many things that I had not noticed the previous times.
There are also people talking about the flaws and improbabilty of it. Once again, I think those were meant to be there. It is an indeed flawed story, but once again, you are hearing the story from the voice of the accused.
It's fun to peice the movie together and come up with alternate endings. Whether or not it will ever be completely understood, is anyone's guess, and perhaps that was the way it was meant to be.

Interesting, albeit gruesome. Unfortunately, you can see the twist coming from a mile away, and the film fails to add up the elements once the mystery is solved. The weak ending and one-sided nature of the storytelling makes this an unsatisfying and frustrating thriller. Too much is left unspoken and unexplained. I don't recommend it.

The Director of this film said it started out as a documentary about the dynamics that come into play when two sociopaths join forces to produce one truly dangerous uber sociopath. As he went along though, he found that his material was better presented in the form of fiction.

I don't see how this film could ever have been a documentary. As one English schoolboy leads another into complicity, their rationales grow just too far-fetched and elaborate. They invoke texts from the ancient Knights Templar and their modern Masonic brethren. It's almost a sort of Da Vinci Code conspiracy theory that drives them. The viewer is even left with an implication that a Masonic conspiracy might actually be at work. This caroms the film off into extreme improbability. Homicidal duos such as Leopold and Loeb usually just operate under simpler principles of gang psychology, with two being emboldened to do what one alone wouldn't dare.

Also, the Director/Writer makes this an example of "Gestalt" psychology, where the whole becomes larger than the sum of the parts. The principles of Gestalt psychology though apply more to how an individual perceives his world, and aren't applicable here. So this principle is really just dragged in by the ear to lend a note of serious scholarship to the film.

However, the movie is well-acted and brilliantly photographed. Half of it was filmed on location in Yorkshire settings and it takes us into the still starched, ordered, and pervasively sadistic world of the English schoolboy. The Director said he didn't want to pin down the year of the movie's action, allowing it to be anywhere from the 1970s to the present. We see the actual interiors of places with Dickensian (or Harry Potter-like) names such as "Giggleswick." It's a visual feast.

You will also incidentally and painlessly learn some history from this film, as much as that history turns out to be irrelevant to most real-life psychological motivation. And the movie will probably impel you to look more closely at your standard deck of playing cards. Why is the jack holding a deadly spear? And who is that creeping up behind the King with a knife?

Murderous intent (aka Like Minds) was released in 2006 to very little fanfare and the DVD followed in 2007. It is an English/Australian co-production which has a lot of appeal today, with the current taste for the macabre.
I have just discovered the film and I agree with earlier Amazon reviewers that it is a well crafted and very well cast film with a lot to recommend it. The script is good, but does tend to become somewhat strangulated in its final stages as things Masonic become overstretched. But the casting of the young protagonists - Eddie Redmayne (in his first film) and Tom Sturridge - is quite inspired - and both have gone on to become established film actors. There is a young Amit Shah in the film, and he too has become an established actor.
Toni Collette - as a forensic psychologist who rather exceeds her brief is pretty good too. Richard Roxburgh, who is somewhat lionised here in Australia at the moment puts in a pedestrian performance as a cigarette lighter carrying copper.
Casting of support actors is excellent, the film score is seductive and the Special Features are very good - we has commentary by the writer/director Geoffrey Read accompanied by the Composer Carlo Giacco and also a Making of Doco.
Both of these are sub-titled in English and the film is subtitled in Spanish as well as English for the Hearing Impaired.
So overall this is a film with a lot to recommend it - it is most unfortunate that it was so soon buried 5 years ago

The moment I laid eyes on Tom Sturridge my heart melted. This guy is too gorgeous to be true in a darkly mysterious way. His face and jet black hair were gorgeous in every shot of him in this film but to tell you the truth he is the only reason I watch this film. I cannot really follow this movie very well. It was a bit hard to pick up on and understand. Tom Sturridge's gorgeous face was the enlightenment of the whole film in my honest personal opinion. All I can understand is that he is supposed to be a sociopath obsessed with death and dissecting animals and that Eddie Redmayne did not like him. Then all of a sudden they are sort of clicking and killing by the end of the movie. Honestly this movie was totally confusing to comprehend. I did not understand the plot very well and the purpose of this film except that Tom's character had a bad influence on Eddie Redmayne's character by the end and the very ending scene makes you think Eddie was lying and actually was bad. I have no idea. I could watch this over and over and still not get it but I would watch it only for the sake of seeing gorgeous Tom Sturridge.

Four-star mark is for a mis-catching accent of teen-boy characters presenting an excellent story of the Catholic school high-grades, whose thirst for individual achievements and ring-leading is well-mixed with mutual attraction and pathologic urges.

They are not Hannibal] yet, but a sure young predators alike those of Grimm Love] adults surely.

Not so bad police/school thriller.