Truly lousy screenplay sinks this one. Gabrielle Anwar, Adrian Dunbar, and Stephen Dorff all try hard to make this work (Dorff even attempts an English accent!) but the plot as it unfolds doesn't quite work. There seems like there was some scenes left out that might have made some of the explanation of why the characters do the things they do (or why they feel as attached to one another as they do)
The murder of an old friend brings a detective played by Dunbar into contact with this posh well to do aristocratic family including a pair of siblings played by Dorff and Anwar...and they're both engaged to other people, and havn't seen one another in five or so years, but they both harbor a dangerous attachment to one another.
There's a backstory here that includes a third sibling (A twin for Dorff) who died under mysterious circumstances---it seems like it was an accidental death (or was it???) at the hands of an errant crossbow shot by Dorff as a child and in their grief he and his sister apparently clung to each other cementing a you know primal relationship that can't be surpassed no matter how apart they grow or something? I'm not entirely sure--but i think that's it.
Trivia Alert BTW---A very young Kiera Knightly plays the younger version of Anwar in the flashback scenes of her as a girl.
Anyways the movie makes a hash out of all of this while also trying to bring in a bunch of other suspects who could plausibly have killed the detective's old friend--but we all know its gonna come down to either Dorff or Anwar because otherwise there'd be no movie!!!!
There's a plotline involving the detective getting overly involved with Anwar, much to the horror of the woman he shares custody of a child with although i'm never sure if they're married or divorced or just around each other an awful lot. (The detective's relaionship with his daughter is also touched upon, but again its all tangential to the mystery he's trying to unravel.)
Anyways this could've been first rate--but its a mess. Its a complete hash of a muder mystery and the ending is bad....really, really, really bad. But its well filmed!!!! The movie looks really, really good---visually its a good looking movie, but its all for nothing because you will not care one way or the other about what's actually happening onscreen.
The murder of an old friend brings a detective played by Dunbar into contact with this posh well to do aristocratic family including a pair of siblings played by Dorff and Anwar...and they're both engaged to other people, and havn't seen one another in five or so years, but they both harbor a dangerous attachment to one another.
There's a backstory here that includes a third sibling (A twin for Dorff) who died under mysterious circumstances---it seems like it was an accidental death (or was it???) at the hands of an errant crossbow shot by Dorff as a child and in their grief he and his sister apparently clung to each other cementing a you know primal relationship that can't be surpassed no matter how apart they grow or something? I'm not entirely sure--but i think that's it.
Trivia Alert BTW---A very young Kiera Knightly plays the younger version of Anwar in the flashback scenes of her as a girl.
Anyways the movie makes a hash out of all of this while also trying to bring in a bunch of other suspects who could plausibly have killed the detective's old friend--but we all know its gonna come down to either Dorff or Anwar because otherwise there'd be no movie!!!!
There's a plotline involving the detective getting overly involved with Anwar, much to the horror of the woman he shares custody of a child with although i'm never sure if they're married or divorced or just around each other an awful lot. (The detective's relaionship with his daughter is also touched upon, but again its all tangential to the mystery he's trying to unravel.)
Anyways this could've been first rate--but its a mess. Its a complete hash of a muder mystery and the ending is bad....really, really, really bad. But its well filmed!!!! The movie looks really, really good---visually its a good looking movie, but its all for nothing because you will not care one way or the other about what's actually happening onscreen.