I don't know how long-distance truck drivers can stand it. Hours and hours on bleak interstate highways punctuated by mazes of lanes through cities like Norfolk and New York. And you must be sharp at all times. I hitched a ride with one driver who misestimated the height of his rig and the clearance of the Triborough Bridge and, pow, my head went through the windshield.
The boredom and stress are enough to drive you crazy. That may be what happened to David Arquette as Keith Hunter Jesperson, aka The Happy Face Killer. Probably not, though. Nobody knows why someone would deliberately set out to kill a number of people seriatim, including total strangers. We can all put ourselves in the place of the person who murders a friend or a spouse. Those are people who are in a position to hurt us, whose opinions we care about.
But a couple of hookers at truck stops? And then bragging about it later to the police and the FBI? The movie gives us the reliable child-abuse excuse, which can be dismissed with a wave of the hand. He grew up in a dysfunctional family. Ho hum. So did you and I. Furthermore I had a wicked hangnail when I was only five. Is it any wonder that I have all these bodies buried in my back yard? Spring turns the garden into a gay panorama of canary yellow Forsythia. In the end, when a rough-hewn answer is finally uncovered, it's more likely to be due to a neurological confluence centered somewhere in the neighborhood of the amygdala, which governs the fight-or-flight response.
Well, I'm rambling a little, I know, but the film doesn't really call for much treatment. The two performers-in-chief are David Arquette, who does a credible job as the serial murderer, and Gloria Reuben as the FBI investigator, Mellinda Gand, who intrudes into what the Oregon cops consider a local affair. She's smooth, understated, and pixyish, and the fact that she's a woman allows the writers to get it some digs at the patriarchal society we're suffered to live under. Both Arquette and Reuben have a couple of good moments on screen but neither has a chance to stretch his or her acting chops. The formula is too strictly adhered to. It's as if they were actually aiming at mediocrity.
There are a horde of movies about serial killers, perhaps more movies than killers. They almost form a genre of their own. As these things go, this is strictly routine, filmed in gray under the lowering skies of Vancouver, B.C.
The boredom and stress are enough to drive you crazy. That may be what happened to David Arquette as Keith Hunter Jesperson, aka The Happy Face Killer. Probably not, though. Nobody knows why someone would deliberately set out to kill a number of people seriatim, including total strangers. We can all put ourselves in the place of the person who murders a friend or a spouse. Those are people who are in a position to hurt us, whose opinions we care about.
But a couple of hookers at truck stops? And then bragging about it later to the police and the FBI? The movie gives us the reliable child-abuse excuse, which can be dismissed with a wave of the hand. He grew up in a dysfunctional family. Ho hum. So did you and I. Furthermore I had a wicked hangnail when I was only five. Is it any wonder that I have all these bodies buried in my back yard? Spring turns the garden into a gay panorama of canary yellow Forsythia. In the end, when a rough-hewn answer is finally uncovered, it's more likely to be due to a neurological confluence centered somewhere in the neighborhood of the amygdala, which governs the fight-or-flight response.
Well, I'm rambling a little, I know, but the film doesn't really call for much treatment. The two performers-in-chief are David Arquette, who does a credible job as the serial murderer, and Gloria Reuben as the FBI investigator, Mellinda Gand, who intrudes into what the Oregon cops consider a local affair. She's smooth, understated, and pixyish, and the fact that she's a woman allows the writers to get it some digs at the patriarchal society we're suffered to live under. Both Arquette and Reuben have a couple of good moments on screen but neither has a chance to stretch his or her acting chops. The formula is too strictly adhered to. It's as if they were actually aiming at mediocrity.
There are a horde of movies about serial killers, perhaps more movies than killers. They almost form a genre of their own. As these things go, this is strictly routine, filmed in gray under the lowering skies of Vancouver, B.C.