A Crime (2006) User Reviews

Weird, but Original

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 9 May 2009]

While returning home after fixing the lights of a billboard, the worker Vincent Harris (Norman Reedus) passes by a taxi with a damage of about 2 x 45 cm on the door. When Vincent arrives home, he finds his wife murdered on the floor of the living room. He claims that the driver was wearing a red jacket and a ring with a large stone. Three years later, he lives in Brooklyn but is still chasing the killer of his wife. His dysfunctional neighbor Alice Parker (Emmanuelle Béart) has a crush on him, but Vincent is haunted by the ghosts of his past. When Alice meets the cab driver Roger Culkin (Harvey Keitel) out of the blue, she seduces him, damages his taxi and gives a red jacked and a ring to him. Then she forces him to meet Vincent, inventing a culprit to release Vincent from his past and stay with her.

"A Crime" is a weird but original movie, supported by the magnificent Emmanuelle Béart in the role of a fatal woman. The story is unusual and follows the style of a film-noir, and the mysterious character performed by Emmanuelle Béart is one of the most manipulative I have ever seen, using her sexy body to create an illusional relationship with the tough taxi driver Roger Culkin to achieve her ultimate objective. The movie has erotic scenes performed by Emmanuelle Béart and Harvey Keitel and I liked it. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Crime" ("The Crime")

Never Quite Gets Going.

[kkhannah · 5/10 · 7 February 2012]

I'm going to admit straight off of the bat that the only reason I watched this film was because I'm a huge Norman Reedus fan. I'm also going to immediately admit that the only reason I continued watching this film once I got past the half hour point was also because of Norman Reedus.

The plot of the film has plenty of potential and, perhaps in another director's hands, could have been a thrilling, emotional drama. What we actually receive, however, is a film sorely lacking in emotion and character development. This applies to the plot as well; the murder of Vincent's wife, which should have felt like the driving force of the story, was really more like a brief point. In addition, the entire movie seems to be lacking in motivation; many aspects that could have been explored further are left unexplained or simply ignored. I also had to suspend realism at a number of points, especially regarding Alice's seduction of Roger basically happening in one night.

Of all the characters, Alice's was most underdeveloped and it almost feels like the writers didn't even make an attempt to make her likable. Indeed, over the course of the film, the only things I truly felt towards her were anger and childish annoyance. This is a role that could have been written much, much better and that improvement alone most likely would have changed the entire film.

Every movie does have a highlight, however, and the highlight of A Crime happens to be the acting of Norman Reedus and Harvey Keitel. The latter gives a quietly menacing, slightly creepy performance as cab driver Roger and Norman, although underutilized, plays his role to the best of his ability.

Overall, if you're a Norman Reedus or Harvey Keitel fan, or are extremely bored on a weekend, give the film a try. Otherwise, there are much better 'noir' films that you could view.

"If trashy is what you want, I can provide that."

[classicsoncall · 6/10 · 25 November 2022]

First off, there's nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing in the story to make me believe Roger Culkin (Harvey Keitel) killed Ashley Harris. The fact that Vincent Harris (Norman Reedus) passed by a speeding cab on his way home on the evening his wife was murdered doesn't prove anything. How the detective who handled the case (Joe Grifasi) could have corroborated the idea is additionally beyond me, and the fact that he didn't dissuade Alice Parker (Emmanuelle Béart) from continuing her own investigation of the case was beyond bizarre.

But anyway, there you have it. Had the screenwriters come up with a little more credibility in establishing the characters and motive for Ashley's death, there might have been something here. But the way it proceeds, Vincent remains a damaged character three years following his wife's death, and Alice's delusional fixation on him as a potential lover makes her a deranged woman in search of a killer, and because there isn't one, she intends to manufacture one. Even more bizarre after Alice admits to Roger that she set him up, he becomes even more transfixed with the idea of continuing their relationship.

I have to admit, the basic plot here was pretty intriguing, and with a better back story and clever writing, this could have gone the way I think it was intended to go. As it is, with so many question marks built in to the picture, it's difficult to take seriously when all is said and done. The best I can say is that at the finale, Vincent and Alice pretty much got what they deserved with each other, no matter what that might turn out to be.

Undeveloped screenplay

[cm-albrecht · 20 November 2010]

Although this was an intriguing film and Mr. Keitel is always a pleasure to watch, the screenplay left me disappointed. In the first place, all the husband did was glimpse a taxi passing him in the opposite direction and from that deduced that the taxi driver killed his wife. No motive, no explanation. We just see her dead body and leap ahead three years to see the man obsessed with his wife's murder. For no reason that I can ascertain, even the cops take it for granted that the taxi driver was the culprit; all this based upon one brief glance of a speeding taxi. We (the viewers) didn't even get a good look, but the husband managed to note a long gash in the driver's door, a large ring on the driver's hand and a red jacket the driver was wearing. Now we're expected to believe that three years later the murderer is still driving around in his taxi with his red jacket and big ring. In the end, a broke and homeless taxi driver and a broke woman suddenly have a nice vehicle to drive and in it she finds a large ring which presumably tells us that after all, this man is actually the taxi driver who murdered a woman three years earlier. If I were a cop, she and the writer are the only culprits I'd throw in jail.

Another Weird One With Yep, Harvey Keitel In It

[wandernn1-81-683274 · 6/10 · 28 November 2022]

Harvey Keitel has a sterling reputation of finding the weirdest roles possible and this is yet another one. He also has the reputation for always finding roles in which he gets to flash some skin, and again this one is no exception. Keitel plays a brutish cab driver who gets caught up in a plot of seduction and intrigue.

It's a weird story about weird people. Altho made in 2006 it certainly looks like it was made in the 70's like in the time of Taxi Driver. There's some skin in the movie. Dialogue is average so nothing special there. Seems like there could have been more to it I am sure many would find it boring.

6/10.

Not worth watching

[lhhung_himself · 3/10 · 23 May 2007]

It becomes very obvious in the first few minutes that the characters aren't going to behave like real people do and that it's going to be a study of something "deep". I thought, OK this might work - there might be some great truth at the end that justifies the outlandish plot. Nope - like the Lady in the Water - at the end you realise that you really did waste your time.

MILD SPOILERS start

And no I did not miss the "clues" scattered through the film that Keitel may have done the deed. If it was meant to be interpreted that he did then the plot is incredibly stupid. If they were intended to provide some ambiguity so that Beart could rationalize her actions - then that makes more sense but I think it's the former seeing that none of the characters' actions are very believable.

MILD SPOILERS end

In summary this is another case of someone having a somewhat clever premise but not being able to decide what to do with it. So aside from some shots of Keitel's kiester and Beart's new assets (they weren't there in Manon des Sources...) there's not much that is interesting to see here.

An apt title

[MBunge · 4/10 · 18 April 2012]

Yes, Harvey Keitel is in this. Yes, he gets naked.

Yes, Emmanuelle Beart is in this. Yes, she gets naked.

Yes, this is a European production of an American crime drama. Yes, it sucks.

A Crime attempts to weld together a U-S style psychological thriller, complete with a couple of "big" twists that anyone can see coming, with a existentialist examination of love and obsession right out of French cinema. Maybe that's not such a bad idea but this movie is the worst of all possible worlds. It's as boring and pretentious as any art house Euro flick while also being as vacuous and preposterous as any other piece of crap that gets cobbled together in the States. As a general rule, I try to watch a movie straight through no matter how bad it is. It's the best way to capture the full effect and it's only fair to the folks who made it. Every so often, though, I run into a motion picture where I can't stand it. I have to stop the film at some point, get up out of my chair and shake off the despair and ennui. A Crime is one of those movies.

Vincent Harris (Norman Reedus) is a man whose wife was murdered 3 years ago and the only lead is the taxi he saw leaving their home, a gash in the side and the driver wearing a red jacket and a big, shiny ring. Now, Vincent lives in a Brooklyn apartment and races his pet greyhound that never wins. Alice Parker (Emmanuelle Beart) is Vincent's neighbor, a frequent drunk who's desperately in love with him. Or at least some desperate approximation of what she thinks love is. Vincent is fixated on finding his wife's killer. We know that because Alice and a police detective (Joe Grifasi) specifically describe Vincent in those terms. For his part, Vincent doesn't do anything to justify that description until the film is almost halfway over and then he doesn't appear to be fixated. He acts like he's utterly off his rocker, but I guess the filmmakers realized they had to do something to demonstrate Vincent's alleged obsession or the 2nd half of the movie would make no sense at all.

Convinced that Vincent will never be her's until he locates his wife's murderer, Alice heads out and seduces a cabbie named Roger Culkin (Harvey Keitel). She beds him, gets him to fall off the AA wagon, puts a gash in the side of his cab and has him don a red jacket and a big, shiny ring. Then she pushes Roger and Vincent together and…bingo!

So, to sum up, at this point in A Crime, we've got a pathetic wretch who manipulates a crazy guy into killing another guy who has a headband and a boomerang. Oh, yeah. I forgot that Roger Culkin has a headband and a boomerang. It wouldn't normally be a big deal but those two things pretty much define his entire character.

It turns out that Alice's scheme works and she and Vincent wind up in each other's arms. Then Roger resurfaces and although I sorely hoped that he was a ghost or Alice's hallucination, he's real and his brush with death turned him into some sort of taxi cab supercriminal who exists outside the law. He demands Alice run away with him or he'll turn Vincent in as an attempted murderer. But then it turns out that Roger was the guy who killed Vincent's wife after all and Alice slays him after Roger suddenly turns into the dumbest man alive. Vincent and Alice reunite, only for Vincent to discover what Alice had done, and they both lived happily ever after. Or at least that's what I got out of the ending.

There's a frickin' cornucopia of things wrong with A Crime. It's slow. It has no energy or rhythm. Vincent and Alice are barely two dimensional. It's too long. Both of the twists involving Roger can be seen coming a mile away. It's too quiet. The success of Alice's scheme is so improbable that I at first thought it was evidence that the film's POV had shifted to her delusional perspective. Too much time is spent on Alice and Roger's contrived bar conversations. A headband and a boomerang!

What A Crime smells like is some arrogant Euro effort to class up an American genre flick that founders on a poor grasp of genre mechanics and a lack of interest in any of the characters as human beings. It is dreary and dreadful and if you can view the whole thing in a single sitting, then you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. For all us lesser folk, skip this loser.

Stupid ending negates all that preceded it...

[abitrowdy · 2/10 · 24 September 2013]

What is it with screen writers and their slavish hunger for a twist ending? This movie had potential, poorly realized, but promising enough for me to stick with it until the end. Then it fell completely apart, so that they could have a twist at the end.

Spoiler Alert - Apparently it is okay to pick out a complete stranger and set him up to be murdered, because, golly, he might accidentally turn out to be the actual bad guy anyway. See? That makes it okay. Oh goody, our two would-be, cold-blooded murderers can go off to live happily ever after, after all.

All in all, not much about not much. Barely tolerable, with a complete let down at the end.

Excellent thriller in the tradition of Henri-Georges Clouzot and René Clément

[summerisle · 8/10 · 28 June 2007]

Some people might have two problems with the film: 1. It's rather old fashioned (which is a good thing in my opinion, I don't like the regular hyped mainstream trash). The plot is the kind of story that could come from a novel of Patricia Highsmith, and the look of the film is more like it's from the late 70's or early 80's. 2. The pretty complex story with a lot of strange (and maybe) almost unbelievable coincidences. And you don't get a simple positive character for identification. Exact the same way many french thrillers from the good old times were working (especially those of Clouzot). Though sometimes these films seem a bit too over-constructed (and I must admit I had this problem when I first saw Clouzot's "Les Diaboliques", 1955). But when you accept this (and life itself sometimes surprises us with strange coincidences too), you will see an excellent, very emotional thriller with great performances. You'll never know what happens next!

What the heck just happened?

[gringogigante · 2/10 · 15 April 2012]

SPOILERS!! I feel like I got drunk and wandered into the middle of a very strange conversation between a guy who is obsessed with dog racing, a crazy French woman, and a caveman. I think I can see what they were trying for, but oh my did it fall short. It was disjointed, disorienting, and confusing.

You start the movie and some enormous leaps of logic are made about the cabbie being the killer....why the heck did he focus on this cab? How could he have noticed this cabbie's freaking ring, but not a cab number or company?

Then you're transported to the future where there is a very strange French woman that sleeps is crazy, drinks a lot, and sleeps around. Who is this crazy lady and why is she obsessed with her neighbor.

Then comes Harvey Kietel. Man, I love HK, but the direction, editing, SOMETHING was just off with him. Talk about a caveman. My gosh.

I gave this every chance I could, but it was not good. I gave it two stars due to a couple of cool cinematography shots, angles, etc. But that is it.

Don't waste your time.

Huh?

[darciecal · 11 September 2011]

***SPOILERS***SPOILERS***SPOILERS**** I watched this movie because I'm a big Norman Reedus fan. I would have preferred if he'd had more screen time for character development. My review contains SPOILERS! Alice (Emmanuelle Beart), a small woman with lips like a cartoon duck, is supposedly so beautiful she can get any man she wants. Predictably, she wants the one man who doesn't want her: Vincent (Reedus), who finds her annoying. He's also hung up on his wife's murder of 3 years prior, which he believes was committed by a cabbie in a yellow cab with a dented door, and wearing a red shirt and a ring. Now, you'd think they'd be able to find this guy. Granted, there are tons of cabs in NYC, but not all of them are yellow. You think they'd be able to find cabs that were on the road at that time and check for dented doors, and also check dispatch records to see which cabbies were driving. But no, with all the information they have, they can't find the killer.

Alice decides that if Vincent can only get over his wife's murder (by killing the killer), he would immediately and automagically fall in love with her, despite the fact that he doesn't really like her. She then dupes aging cabbie Roger (Harvey Keitel) to think that the most beautiful woman in the world could fall instantly in love with an aging cabbie who has a boomerang fetish. She dents his cab door (no explanation how she could duplicate the size, shape & location of a dent she's never seen), buys him a red shirt (as if the cabbie wouldn't have changed his shirt in 3 years) and a ring, which again we don't know how she could duplicate.

She steers Roger toward Vincent, who arranges Roger's death but does such a bad job of it (despite being helped by a gang) that Roger lives, seeks out Alice (returns to her like a BOOMERANG, get it?) and after Alice tearfully confesses everything to him, decides he still wants her. After doing a weird dance with a booze glass at a jazz club, he insists that he and Alice leave NYC. The minute he falls asleep in her presence, she murders him. Since the NYC police are portrayed as completely incompetent, we are left with the idea she gets away with it and she, Vincent, and his dog all live happily ever after, because of course the need to avenge his wife really was all that was needed for Vincent to fall madly in love with Alice.

I liked the look of this film, and I did keep wondering what would happen next. The acting is decent but Reedus is only given a one-dimensional character to play, and the numerous implausibilities hampered it for me. I generously give it a 7, because it gave me a couple of hours to look (on and off) at Norman Reedus.

Pseudo thriller boomerangs on writer

[djderka · 1/10 · 14 June 2019]

Whew! Bought this for a dollar at Dollar Store. Spent 99 cents too much. Basic plot; Man catches glimpse of car fleeing the scene of murder where his wife was killed. He goes to NYC to search for a cab with a scratch among 14,000 cabs. He races his dog on the side with a bunch of Asian dog racers. Alice Parker has a crush on him and frames Roger Culkin(shabby cabby) to take the fall so she can hook up with Vincent Harris (the guy whose wife was murdered).

In basic thrillers each scene should have you wondering what will happen next. In this film, you wonder when it will end as each scene is sooooooo boring.

Alice Parker (Emmanuelle Beart) has the emotional range of a piece of toast. Harvey Keitel needed some fast bucks for rent so he signed on as the cab driver and a chance for a sex scene (two) with Beart. She has one look trough out the entire film. The film maker could have used a mannequin and saved a few bucks.

Keep your remote in a holster so you so you can fast draw for fast forward. You will be using it a lot. The writer needs a course in screen writing. Or watch Breaking Bad for basic screen writing, where each scene keeps you anticipating the next scene. Not praying for a quick ending.

A Crime should have been directed by Michael Bay and made into a 10 minute film. This movie has more in common with Plan 9, than Clouzot.

Weird thriller

[yahaira-729-694701 · 5/10 · 3 October 2022]

Seems like she got what she wanted. A woman goes to such extremes to win his love. Alice is sick in love and she manipulates Vincent by traping and a cab driver into her scheme to break Vincent's trauma and win his affection. Some intense sex scenes with Harvey Keitel make it pornographyic in some of the shots. The character Vincent has the opportunity to break his ongoing trauama of his dead girlfriend. Revenge is his only cure to love another, that being his neighbor next door. He never gets thectruth from Alice who has deviced the crime and succeeds . The cinematography is seedy almost film noir.the actorscall carry their charcters pathoscreally well. But the story is unusual in that the crime is acceptible for the lovers to walk away scot free all for love.

It certainly is a crime

[tosi-18344 · 4/10 · 25 November 2022]

"A Crime"

A crime that they actually made this into a movie that had virtually no plot, made no sense and had no ending. Made sense in the beginning made no sense in the end. Harvey Kartel's body is in great shape, for an old man. And I like Harvey, usually. Takes place in New York City in the worst areas possible. It's dark and uninteresting. Music score is so dull, as dull as the movie.

Ok... now I'm just filling space to make up the required number of characters to post a review of this sadly pointless and boring movie. Sorry, you've wasted your time reading this but worse, you may have even watched it.

That is truly a crime.

Intriguing

[Rodrigo_Amaro · 9/10 · 5 August 2010]

Vincent (Norman Reedus) is still suffering the loss of his wife killed three years ago by some psychopath taxi driver. He can't move with his life so his neighbor (Emmanuelle Béart) who has a crush on him tries to help him by trying to find this killer. Easy? Maybe. So she picks a random taxi driver (Harvey Keitel) and starts to get involved with this strange guy and she's gonna invent that this guy is really the killer of Vincent's wife. And then...

The story behind the movie "A Crime" is one of those intriguing stories where the next movement, the next step is always awaited. There are many surprises, not in that clichéd sense of plot twists, but just in the way that you can't see the obvious, it doesn't exist here. A quiet and slow paced story where the development of the characters and their actions is more important than to really know if they're gonna find the killer or what's gonna happen with Roger the taxi driver. But this is not a perfect screenplay, there's few things wrong with it (the beginning was way too fast, in one moment Vincent see his wife dead and then the movie leaps three years later; and his first moments with his neighbor are quite strange, not well explained).

But besides that the movie floats very well and leaves the viewer wanting more of it. "A Crime" runs about 100 minutes but I think that it could be more longer specially in terms of characters development (mostly Vincent), showing the previous life of the main characters and things like that because these characters are presented and we're feel like "Can we like these characters? What's their reason behind their actions"? It misses much.

The performances are good, most notably Harvey Keitel (How come this guy gets incredible roles where he has to perform erotic scenes at the age of 60? Things that even younger actors don't do frequently and I'm even comparing him with his young co-star Reedus who only has one scene with Béart and it's not even close of Keitel's seductive scenes with Béart). Béart was quite convincible in some parts as the desperate woman who wants to be with Vincent but instead she got trapped and got romantically and sexually involved with the taxi driver. I really liked Norman Reedus mysterious performance here but I wished he could have more scenes and a better character development. Most of his lines are whispered so I advise you to turn up the volume or you're probably miss what he's saying.

A surprising, effective and great film to watch. 9/10

Total waste of time.

[charleyroth-205-559528 · 1/10 · 19 June 2012]

A boring mish-mash of crap! We had taped it and it was indicated to be a four star movie so we watched it. How does one get revenge on an unknown someone who has to be nuts to give it more than one star? The French female lead has lips that made you think that if you had to leave her for a while that all you had to do was stick her to the wall with them and she would be there when you returned.

I kept hoping that Harvey's boomerang would come back and hit him in the head and put us all out of the misery of this whatever-it-was.

We know someone who says he is a "screen writer" but has never yet sold anything after years and years of trying. When we see a piece of stuff like this, we turn to each other and say, "Dan could have written that!"

What a bunch of low lives

[lighterthanair-82569 · 2/10 · 19 November 2022]

The three protagonists are dull and dreary; Harvey Keitel, a zen/boomerang throwing/aging taxi driver, Emmanuelle, an unemployed petty criminal/drunk( and ravishingly beautiful), who for unknown reasons is madly obsessed with Norman, an average looking depressed unemployed underground greyhound racing addict, each one living in shabby apartments. Then comes the love triangle with unsavory intenions; two characters wanting to murder the third character. At this point you flash back to Reservoir Dogs and hope they all shoot each other. I think the blame is with the director for painting such a gloomy portrait with sorry to say, POS characters. Put this in the hands of better talent it might have had a chance. (And gross more than $400,000. How pathetic.)

One of the worst movies I have seen

[starpatchsam · 1/10 · 22 February 2011]

Not much of a plot and until I read other reviews I could barely figure out what the whole point of the movie was. I cannot believe Harvey Keitel would be in a movie like this. It needed A lot more explanation and at least some action. The dog races had nothing to do with the story. They needed to have the wife in the movie so the viewers could at least try to understand the importance of any of the story At the end you didn't even feel like it should be the end. Just as confusing and boring as the rest of the movie. The actors were not very good as you can tell by looking up their past movie history they haven't done too well before or after this movie. Thank goodness I had a free Redbox code so at least I didn't waste any money just wasted time watching it.

Not plausible

[lgm-15016 · 4/10 · 20 November 2022]

Alice is obviously insane. I want to slap that pitiful look off her face, she is more trouble than she's worth, she causes so many problems for both men. Vincent and his wife's relationship wasn't examined, there should have been a few minutes devoted to their life before her death. How coincidental is it that Alice finds another cab driver who wears a big ring and drives a damaged car? Very very bad luck for poor Harvey Keitel. What I don't understand is why he took her back after everything she did? He takes her back? Don't take her back, Harvey, you are just as crazy as she is!!! I wish he had just gone to the police, he was innocent😇

excellent !

[queridaprod · 10/10 · 11 October 2006]

a film, scenario and atypical director ! it will stay as a classic ! Manuel Pradal film an unknown New York and actors as Emmanuelle Béart is so different and natural as she have to be. Keitel is one of the New Yorker's indispensable actor that Manuel Pradal use as a "maestro"You can't miss this movie wrote by Pradal and Benaquista in the mood of Ginostra as a great scenario, a great story. there some Ferrara inspirations, and definitely Manuel Pradal is an author, not only a director, interested and inspired by stories, in love with actors and giving the right place to them and to the special locations... In this case New York is an actor as Keitel and Beart and will stay like in the Scorcese's Mean street and taxi driver...