42) Red Lights (2012) Dir: Rodrigo Cortés Not Yet Released, Thank Christ Date Seen: January 28, 2012 Rating: 2/5
Wow, this one stinks. Cortés has a weird disdain for his own material. He cheapens threadbare material that he's actively straining to make appear more meaningful than it is by either fast-forwarding through some parts of his blaise story or over-burdening talented actors with awful, sticks-in-your-throat dialogue fraught with Deep Meaning. Red Lights is a movie that doesn't know what it wants to be.
Still, the fact of the matter is: Cortés threw in a bunch of scifi/horror cliches (ex: the death of Cillian Murphy's mentor) and gave pseudo-intellectual meaning to others (the emphasis on man's animal nature, as is made abundantly clear during the bathroom fight scene). And none it's very interesting!
I was struggling to like the film when it was setting up its premise. But once Robert Deniro's hilariously awful Scott Walker impersonator blows up Murphy's equipment (WITH HIS MIND), I knew it was all downhill from there. I feel especially bad for Deniro because he's trying so damn hard to do right by a role that is tacky at best and actively awful at its frequent worst (ex: "Buckley! How did you do that?! BUCKLEY?!" and, "I come with the wind, and I go with the wind!").
Still, I suppose, it's worth seeing if only to see Deniro as Scott Walker levitate after delivering a bombastic and meaningless pseudo-mystical speech that would make Coffin Joe blush.
