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Surveillance

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Cert: 18

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Dir: Jennifer Lynch. Cast: Julia Ormond, Bill Pullman, Pell James, Ryan Simpkins, French Stewart, Kent Harper

 

Description: Captain Billings and his officers Degrasso and Wright have struggled to make sense of a killing spree on their patch in the Santa Fe desert. Thankfully, the local cops have three witnesses who could prove vital to unmasking the perpetrator: hard as nails officer, Jack Bennet, cocaine addict Bobby and eight-year-old Stephanie, whose entire family has just been slain. Billings and his men wait patiently for the Feds to arrive. Little do they know the twisted mind games that will play out in their interrogation room.

Country: US/GER. 2008. 97mins
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Surveillance has some weird ideas

By Derek Malcolm, Evening Standard  05.03.09
 
Surveillance

Precocious talent: Ryan Simpkins

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“My dad says I’m the sickest bitch,” says the director of this very noir thriller. And since Jennifer Lynch’s dad is David Lynch, he should know what he is talking about.

Jennifer made the weird Boxing Helena and her second feature is only a measure less odd. But it works as a kind of horrific comedy, as cynical as it is brutal.

Set on a highway to nowhere, it stars Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond as FBI agents who arrive in a small town to investigate a string of vicious murders. It is soon clear that the local police are useless but a few details emerge from the witnesses, who include an eccentrically zealous cop, a strung-out junkie, her new boyfriend and her small girl (well played by Ryan Simpkins).

We get to find out roughly what happened through three half-told sets of stories but a surprise ending (well, not entirely a surprise) brings us up short.

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Lynch takes a razor to her characters, all of whom save the little girl are mocked as slightly off their trolleys. The tone has echoes of Twin Peaks but considerably more off-the-wall humour. The result is watchable, even if the spurts of violence which punctuate the piece may be off-putting to some. It’s a bleak piece of Americana with a twisted smile on its face. Sick, if you like, but there’s a real film-maker here and I’ve never seen Ormond and Pullman so effectively not be their usual screen selves.

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