From The New Yorker
A suspense film that tips its hat to "Blow Out" in its opening minutes is setting its sights high. Writer-director Anthony Waller has fashioned his story, about a mute special-effects expert who thinks she has witnessed a murder, as an exercise in early and middle-period De Palma-and he almost pulls it off. By shooting in Moscow, in washed-out blues and browns, he has created an intriguing low-budget seventies-style environment that recalls "Sisters." Marina Sudina, whose face has the pretty innocence of Nancy Allen's, plays the special-effects expert, and the canny idea of making her mute gives Waller the chance to do long, tense scenes without dialogue, as in "Dressed to Kill." His technique is impressive; the film falls flat only when he attempts to make the frightening funny. But the plot takes some nice twists and turns, the tension builds a good head of steam, and the tawdriness never lets up. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker