The Two Faces Of January

Reality is what you want it to be.

Take an older man with a young wife. He's paying, right? Does that make him a fraud?

This is Patricia Highsmith on a low flame. There are resonances of The Talented Mr Ripley although The Two Faces Of January was written many years later.

Rydal (Oscar Isaac) is a tour guide at The Parthenon. He's a handsome, intelligent, ex-Harvard grad slumming it in Europe to get away from a disapproving, authoritarian father who has just died.

He meets Chester MacFarland (Viggo Mortensen), who looks like his dad, with Colette, his pretty new wife. He's a financial adviser from New York. Or so he says. Well, that bit's true. But there's a whole lot that isn't.

Rydal fancies Colette. Chester is on the run. People die accidentally. The local constabulary are inept. Chester panics, drinks too much - the usual. Rydal worries about Colette and feels he's been set up, which he has.

The chase is on. You know about the chase. You have watched it so many times. Now watch it again. From the beginning. On foot. Through narrow streets.

With the exception of Chester there is no attempt at character development. You don't learn enough about Rydal and nothing at all about Colette.

Chester is different. He is the catalyst, the main man, and Mortensen puts flesh on those skinny bones. You study him with interest. The cracks are there. Too many cracks.

In the end you wonder where you are, what it's all about.

A smooth operator. A younger wife. A body in the bathroom.

Hey, ho! Here we go.

Again.