Chloe Directed by: Atom Egoyan Starring: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Amanda Siegfried Rating: R Release Date: March 19, 2010
TRAILER SCORE: 8/10
MY THOUGHTS: The overall tone of Chloe reminds me so much of La Tourneuse de Pages (The Page Turner), which gives me high hopes for a movie that veers right off any predictable formula. With a less stellar cast, we could easily assume Chloe was your garden variety twisty love-triangle/psycho bitchette storyline, but the preview hints at a lot more going on under the surface. Julianne Moore rarely chooses stinkers (ditto for Liam--plus, I'm extremely impressed that he's still functioning after the losses he's suffered) and Amanda Siegfried was the only part of Jennifer's Body that I liked. Clearly, Chloe is going to give us more flawed, reckless humans who make mindless, short-sighted decisions and conclude with some sort of tangled, tragic irony ... but that's kinda cool, especially if done well. It's like a high definition, excellently acted train wreck and it's in someone else's backyard--who doesn't secretly love that?
Most of us, if we suspect our mates of cheating on us, do not go looking for a breathtaking blond escort goddess to try and pin down some real proof--we just dump the turd and move on with our lives. But that's obviously not as melodramatic and the movie would be way too short. Again, if the movie itself is quality, there's nothing more fascinating then watching apparently reasonable people going through complex emotional acrobatics. It's just another sad reminder that our over-sized, malfunctioning brains combined with our Machiavellian social structure is one nasty brew.
The preview for Chloe does almost everything right from the sinister score to the tantalizing little peeks at debauchery...so, why not a nine or ten? Because the preview nods at its twists. It's the same complaint I have with the preview for Shutter Island (which is going to be f**king phenomenal, by the way)--don't wink at us to let us know a plot twist this way comes. It ruins it.
Sigh...so close, though.