This baffling legal thriller could be shown in film schools as a textbook example of how not to make a movie. Every decision, be it plot, casting, photography, sound, and probably even catering, is a bad one. Performances, particularly those of Hopkins (corrupt billionaire), Pacino (corrupt lawyer) and Malin Akerman (corrupt billionaire’s unhinged girlfriend), reach world-class levels of set-munching dreadfulness.
Director Shimosawa is fond of ominous, slow camera pans that finally come to rest on something innocuous like a fridge. The score is thunderously stupid. And the plot is so tangled that you start to wonder if anyone actually read it before greenlighting the project.
A final pivotal shot exemplifies the lack of thought throughout: a key character is confessing to the film’s final big reveal. Unfortunately, she is shot in front of a painting of a bird and framed to give the appearance of a beak growing out of the side of her head. It’s so hilariously inept that it’s almost worth watching.
