A Kind of Murder *** (2016, Patrick Wilson, Jessica Biel, Vincent Kartheiser, Haley Bennett, Eddie Marsan) – Classic Movie Review 12,229

Director Andy Goddard’s 2016 American psychological mystery thriller film A Kind of Murder is an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1954 novel The Blunderer, and stars Patrick Wilson, Jessica Biel, Vincent Kartheiser, Haley Bennett, and Eddie Marsan.

It is a sleek and very good-looking movie, unexpectedly set in 1960 (not even the 1954 of the novel), with all the period trimmings, laid out beautifully. None of this is needed, for the film could just as easily have been contemporary, but it is a satisfying add-on, and probably a costly one too. It does help to give it a satisfying cinema movie feel, and not a TV movie feel. Chris Seager’s cinematography makes the most of the opportunities offered by the period setting and the on-location shooting. It is very striking. Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans compose an equally striking score for the film, eerily minimalistic.

Andy Goddard and screen-writer Susan Boyd provide a fairly strong air of suspense and mystery that pulls you into Highsmith’s extremely dark and depressing story. Highsmith’s gloomy, but she does manage to make gloom exciting. She has a terrible view of humanity, and has us convinced. The air is rancid with the awful smell of human beings. Highsmith’s characters here are all ghastly and irredeemable, while at the same time oddly being rather appealing and likeable, a bit like Tom Ripley actually.

She starts with two men, like she does in Strangers on a Train (1951). They are kind of yin and yang, or maybe more like yin and yin. They are kin anyway. Unlike the Strangers on a Train men, there is no sexual pull between the two men. Instead, they have love of books in common. Well, that is enough. Her main character writes short-story crime fiction and is fascinated by murder. Now who does that sound like?

Walter Stackhouse (Patrick Wilson) is an aspiring writer and book collector. Marty Kimell (Eddie Marsan) runs a used bookstore. Kimell’s wife has recently been murdered, and he has a cast-iron alibi, seen at a cinema showing BUtterfield 8 at the time. Stackhouse has a troubled marriage to neurotic, insanely jealous Clara (Jessica Biel), and she soon turns up dead, and he was seen at the scene. A crazy police detective called Lawrence Corby (Vincent Kartheiser) is investigating both deaths, convinced each husband killed his wife. The guilty Kimell is in the clear, but the innocent Stackhouse is in deep trouble, especially when he starts trying to lie his way out of the mess he’s in. Stackhouse has visited Kimell’s bookstore, and left his name and address, and has his news item in his clippings book. Stackhouse had told folks he wants his wife out of the way, has demanded a divorce, and has followed her when she takes a bus to see her dying mother.

It is all very well set up, thank you Patricia Highsmith, and very well organised in Susan Boyd’s screenplay, which plays out in a taut 95 minutes.

Patrick Wilson and Eddie Marsan are ideally cast and give detailed, intense, effective performances. Vincent Kartheiser is oddly cast as Detective, and gives a weird performance, but it kind of works. He seems a bit too young and not much like a police detective, but he is menacing enough. His is the third main character. All men. Ms Highsmith’s female characters are never anything like as interesting or well-etched.

Jessica Biel draws a real short straw as Clara Stackhouse, giving the actress a lot of trouble. The whiny, clingy Clara is simply there to make her husband want to kill her. It is hard to regret her departure from the movie, and even so she seems to have too much screen time. You can almost feel Highsmith’s relief when she kills her off.

The other main character is Ellie Briess (Haley Bennett), ironically pushed into Walter’s arms and bed by Clara’s insane jealousy. Ellie is just a cypher, giving the actress a lot of trouble. In a nod to film noir, she’s a club singer, Hayley Bennett does her own vocals on her number ‘I Can’t Escape from You’. It’s not great singing, or a great song, but it will do, and the lyrics are appropriate.

The film had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 17, 2016 and was released in the US on December 16, 2016, by Magnolia Pictures.

The cast are Patrick Wilson as Walter Stackhouse, Jessica Biel as Clara Stackhouse, Vincent Kartheiser as Detective Lawrence Corby, Haley Bennett as Ellie Briess, Eddie Marsan as Marty Kimell, Jon Osbeck as Jon Carr, Radek Lord as Tony Ricco, Christine Dye as Claudia, and Michael Douglas Hall as Mr. Devries.

The 1963 French thriller film Le Meurtrier [Enough Rope], directed by Claude Autant-Lara, is an earlier adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1954 novel The Blunderer.

Principal photography began on November 17, 2014 in Cincinnati, Ohio, under the title The Blunderer and production concluded on December 16, 2014. In December 2014, a casting call was put out for Fifties cars and male extras. The film is set in 1960, made clear by the cinema marquee advertising BUtterfield 8. Most of movie was filmed in a small town on the Ohio river called New Richmond, Ohio. The Stackhouse residence at 7900 Rollingknolls Drive in Amberley, Ohio, was designed by New York architect Hugh Hardy.

In August 2015, the film was re-titled A Kind of Murder. The Blunderer may not be the best movie title in the world, but A Kind of Murder is super weak, with a lame TV movie feel. It’s not catchy and it says nothing.

Talking cost, the film seems to have taken only $91,149 worldwide at the box office. That must have been a shocking disappointment for production company Killer Films.

The films of Patricia Highsmith’s novels: Strangers on a Train (1951), Plein Soleil [Purple Noon] (1960), Le Meurtrier [Enough Rope] (1963), The American Friend (1977), This Sweet Sickness (1977), A Dog’s Ransom (1978), The Glass Cell (1978), Le Cri du Hibou [The Cry of the Owl] (1987), The Story Teller (1989), The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), Ripley’s Game (2002), Ripley Under Ground (2005), The Cry of the Owl (2009), The Two Faces of January (2014), Carol (2015), A Kind of Murder (2016), and Deep Water (2022).

Yin and yang is an Ancient Chinese philosophical concept of how opposite or contrary forces may be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,229

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