Hitchcock (2012)

Hitchcock (2012)


User Reviews

Neither a forensic study of the making of Psycho nor an incisive examination of the man himself, Movie "Hitchcock" is a long, rambling, boring essay that serves only to raise a single question: why on earth was it made? Slavish in its adoration of a director who, on a good day, could be amongst the best in the business and on a bad one, just about the worst ("Torn Curtain", anyone?)"Watch Hitchcock" it plods along without a shiver of suspense nor even a whisper of credibility: "it wuz the wife wot did it, guv", seems to be the writer and director's joint explanation for everything ol' Alfred achieved -- as if Mrs H was in some unfathomable way responsible for her husband's sense of timing, humor, irony and individuality of vision.

What utter tosh. Absent anything substantial to hang onto -- and there's no greater indictment of this dross than that it should feature Hollywood's fattest man yet be entirely weightless itself -- Hopkins does what he can to save being confused with the Hindenberg whilst Mirren plays Mirren in much the same way that Britain's other grand dame is notable for one over-wrought performance after another of Dench playing Dench.

At its daftest when dragging the spectre of the eponymous psycho into Hitchcock's dreams -- the screenplay here is at its most desperate to explain. . . something, anything -- and most boring when purporting to represent a so-what-who-could-care-less liaison between Alma and some bloke whose presence doesn't even register, this really is movie-making of the worst kind: flaccid, fatuous and facile. It may have Hitchcock's name as its title, but of the man himself in the actual movie, there's no sign at all.

Storyline

In 1959, Alfred Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, are at the top of their creative game as filmmakers amid disquieting insinuations about it being time to retire. To recapture his youth's artistic daring, Alfred decides his next film will adapt the lurid horror novel, Psycho (1960), over everyone's misgivings. Unfortunately, as Alfred self-finances and labors on this film, Alma finally loses patience with his roving eye and controlling habits with his actresses. When an ambitious friend lures her to collaborate on a work of their own, the resulting marital tension colors Alfred's work even as the novel's inspiration haunts his dreams.


Cast

Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, James D'Arcy, Jessica Biel, Michael Stuhlbarg, Ralph Macchio, Toni Collette, Danny Huston, Michael Wincott, Kurtwood Smith.