Secret Window Review
by Jonathan Moya (jmoya AT cfl DOT rr DOT com)March 24th, 2004
Secret Window
A Movie Review by Jonathan Moya
*** (out of 5)
Johnny Depp: Mort Rainey
Maria Bello: Amy
Timothy Hutton: Ted
Len Cariou: Sheriff
Jon Turturro: John Shooter
Charles S. Dutton: Ken Karsch
Columbia Pictures presents a film written and directed by David Koepp. Based on the Stephen King novella "Secret Window, Secret Garden." Running time: 95 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for violence/terror, sexual content and language).
Johnny Depp continues to commit acts of piracy. In Secret Window he is a writer accused of plagiarism by John Shooter-- a lean dark suited John Turturro who gives Depp's Morton Rainey reason to fear a black hat. More menacing than Oddjobs less lethal bowler from Goldfinger, this hat lets one know that a hatchet job is about to happen.
Depp is about the only actor alive who can pull off Secret Window surprise twist without turning it into the looniest of grand guginol display. The end is "corn"iness at its most silly. In-between there is Johnny Depp at his most eccentric.
The writer and director, David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Spider Man, and Panic Room) has crafted a sly psychological thriller that plays like Groundhog Day caught in a Friday the 13th movie.
Morton Rainey is a mystery writer suffering the twin evils of divorce and writer's block. Depressed he sinks into inaction: long cat naps on the sofa to refresh the brain, scarfing Doritos down in an attempt to get the mind moving in the direction of the jaw, writing the same words over and over again. His creative life is reduced to a typing exercise. Morton Rainey has become a dull boy because he is all play and no work. He has become the quick brown fox that can't and won't jump over the lazy log.
Also, Shooter won't leave Rainey alone. Shooter demands proof and action, and all Rainey wants is inaction. Shooter's constant calling cards- screwdrivers left in the head of a blind dog and a bodyguard, smashed light bulbs, black hats left as ominous warnings, his burning down of Rainey's ex-wife's house- are all beginning to interfere with Rainey's naps, binge eating and hidden smoking. Rainey is really starting to want to (minor spoiler) shoot him.
Depp realizing that he is the land of metafiction via a Stephen King novella, pulls a performance that seems madcap but is really an expertly drawn character variation running at twenty-four frames per second. Rainey is in danger of slipping into the loch of non imagination in where creative suicide resides. He is on the edge were power naps turn into depression then turn into addiction.
His muse in the arms of another man, Rainey stubbornly insist on his noninvolvement and detachment, his right for self-abnegation and self-destruction, because he is afraid of the creative and emotional demons that might be unleashed.
Shooter is that bad literary conceit that comes back to haunt Rainey-- the horror that comes with the creative process. Like a DVD director's release stuffed with alternate endings and scenes, Turturro's Shooter is the creative id that demands revision for the worst, even when what is up there to see is fine and perfect in and of itself.
He eventually demands that Rainey fix the ending because "the ending is the most important thing." When Rainey listens to Shooter, Secret Window collapses in its tragic flaw of revisionism. It gets lost in its own identity.
Koepp who managed to keep Secret Window reasonably suspenseful and sane for its first two thirds is unable to pull-off the hat trick. He can't take the leap into the void of writer's shock. Secret Window squanders the promise of its talent. Had Koepp gone a little more "Depper" Secret Window might have worked.
Copyright 2004 Jonathan Moya
http://www.jonathanmoya.com
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
