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Created Sep 02, 2013 05:55AM PST • Edited Sep 02, 2013 05:55AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   OK 2.5

   I took my wife to another movie that did not star Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchette, Eva Mendes, Marissa Tomei, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Ryan Gosling or Phillip Seymour Hoffman and it was called Closed Circuit. You must do these things to remember why you appreciate a fine performance. Although this international drama is worth the price of a matinee and quality time with your spouse, you can leave your cell phones “on” as nobody is likely to be upset with the distractions. As suspenseful dramas go, the audience is left to appreciate this one with the same expectation of witnessing first time flyers with their excessive carry-on luggage. It will get better someday. The acting betrayed a potentially interesting story, and the production and screen play failed to paint the necessary interstices required of multiple dimensions of mystery. The movie only succeeds in a way that it did not intend. No other “free” country is more of a police state than the UK, and Mr Crowley does use London well to communicate the paranoia of a creeping and chilling loss of liberty.

4. Acting

   Barely OK 2.0

   The acting effort in aggregate is elevated to OK thanks to James Broadbent and Kenneth Cranham. And perhaps as a matter of fairness the movie may have been chopped to much to allow for any of the actors to develop their characters or story lines. That was certainly the case with Joanna Reece (Julia Stiles). But judging by what tape made it into the movie, we might have seen the best 96 minutes the effort could offer.

5. Male Stars Barely OK 2.0

   Eric Bana plays Martin Rose who is supposed to be an arrogant prima donna of a lawyer serving the legacy of the Queen. Perhaps the Queen’s people would recognize all that from Martin but I paid for my ticket in US dollars, sat in an American theatre, and complained about it with fellow American guys while waiting on our American wives. The least someone could have done was make all those supposedly dreadful characteristics evident to me. Anyone. As it was, none of us sitting through this “mystery” did not require the script to get to the 96th minute. There was no twist to the character or the story. That fact was played to a tee by Bana. We did have a moment, right after he pulled his boat to the cluttered London river side, where one of those magic moments in a theatre could have unfolded. But alas it did not. The lead and the director had all of us ready to forgive an average movie with one last escape to the once great British Empire. Instead, we get the Buffalo Bills at the Super Bowl.

6. Female Stars Barely OK 2.0

   It’s a long screaming fall from the heights of British beauty. Decades of bad teeth and big racks have taken American men their bank accounts to zero, and to the movies. Rebecca Hall has thus far acquitted herself well in The Town, Frost/Nixon and even Iron Man 3, but If not for her perfected self-denial, one would not have known she was even British in Closed Circuit. In a role written to display idealism and virtue, she executed a confused self-hating Colonial from Pretoria or Sydney. Like the movie and co-starts itself, her character Claudia Simmons-Howe goes no where. I left the movie thinking that for the first time in the use of hyphens by the modern liberated woman did I find a purpose. Keep adding names to the effort to get it right.

7. Female Costars Good 3.0

   And there is the curious case of Joanna Reece (Julia Stiles). Two brief scenes. One at the dinner party I never attended with the girl I never met and the intrigue I never had. Always memorable. Stiles was able to remind us all why we are thankful to never had been British. And then there is the scene in the park in the rain where Reece and Rose re-calibrate and reassure each other about the predicament they are in. We get a glimpse then of what each character could have been. But like the movie itself, that is all we see of Joanna Reece again.

8. Male Costars OK 2.5

   The roster replicates the performances of the lead actors. Devlin (Ciaran Hinds) predictably was handled by MI-5, a fact sloppily executed. Riz Ahmed as Nazrul Sharma does well enough as the guy next to you on The Tube, and keeps you waiting for his second appearance after explaining the computer and safe Claudia in his first. Only the old boy James Broadbent as the Attorney General delivers an acceptable performance and a memorable sequence of scenes. Unfortunately, it was a pair at around minute 90 and by then you were left longing for the old British Empire and the hope that Helen Mirren drinks from the fountain of youth. But to Broadbent’s credit, you hear a fine British actor deliver a bargain over a British breakfast. Grand.

10. Film

    Barely OK 2.0

    I am a softy for the UK. I am sorry but the culture with the longest running contribution to the fine strokes in a human life for other cultures to witness springs from Britain. So even a dud like this effort with its rowing scenes, the reminder to dawn the wigs, the fella windging about the truck as it parked, and even the final breakfast scene, gives you permission to try again with these Brits. The story line about an important global situation was different and it seems right that the Brits get their go at it. The story just either got lost in the surveillance or was pre-empted with poor direction, acting or production. When a movie gets hit with the trifecta of disappointment then it doesn’t have a chance.

11. Direction Barely OK 2.0

    This movie attains Barely OK status because the Director does bring London to you. You see a lot and that which you know is excluded tells you how deep and rich London is. But that aside, the Director could have improved the content and focus of the story and multiple subplots. All of them were either lost or confused in this movie.

12. Play Barely OK 2.0

13. Music Barely OK 2.0

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5

    Martin Rose answering his phone while rowing was a great scene offering promise early in the movie. The clutter around the dock reminds you that you are not in Tokyo. The lunch scene beautifully executed the school-cafeteria-for-lawyers feel.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.5

    The edge was dulled quite effectively and purposely as you would expect.

17. Sex Innocent 1.0

    None, none was expected, of course.

18. Violence Fierce 2.0

    Claudia is a biter. Exploding trucks from many CCTV screens now is not violent it seems.

19. Rudeness Polite 1.5

    Polite Rudeness in some situations.

21. Reality

    Natural 1.0

    all 1.0

22. Circumstantial Natural 1.0

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0