“Closed Circuit”
Directed by John Crowley
Starring Eric Bana, Rebecca Hall, Julia Stiles, Jim Broadbent, Riz Ahmed, Ciarán Hinds, Anne-Marie Duff, Kenneth Cranham
Crime, Drama, Mystery
96 Mins
R

Closed Circuit is a faux-intellectual “thriller” cloaked in paranoia and government conspiracies that we’ve seen done in a more exciting manner many times before. It churns along turgidly, hoping to capitalize on anti-government sentiment but merely stirs up our desire to check our watches. Although there is a somewhat significant message buried in the narrative discourse, the fact that it’s only about one level deep does little to excite the imagination, much less inspire any sort of conversation exiting the film.

Calling it lazy seems a little disingenuous – as director John Crowley hardly seems to actively spur his audience’s sense of entertainment. Instead, he seems to have just forgotten about it. He seems to have wanted to create a conversational piece of work but it just didn’t pan out. The more suiting description of the film is that it is uninspired. Like a reheated plate of leftovers, we’ve seen these dishes served up before and they were better the first time around.

The narrative center of Closed Circuit follows Martin Rose (Eric Bana), a recluse lawyer working on a massively high profile case. In the aftermath of a London car bombing that claimed the lives of hundreds, Rose has been pulled on as the defense lawyer after his predecessor mysteriously committed suicide. Rose is teamed up with Claudia Simmons-Howe(Rebecca Hall) an ex-lover to put together the defense of an unassuming man stamped by the government as a criminal “mastermind”. Because of the high national security profile of the case, Simmons-Howe and Rose are strictly told not to discuss the secret details of the case with one another. But when Rose starts to suspect that the government is somehow involved in the whole kit-and-kaboodle, he realizes that their lives may be in danger.

In the mix of the scramble to figure out who is who and where trust can be placed, the film flexes a whole lot of beer-belly-tautness. Flabby scenes make for drooping excitement and it isn’t long before we don’t really even care whose life is in danger. All the babbling adds up to narrative fat that should have been trimmed and tidied before it scurried past the cutting room floor. Even with a run-time a touch over an hour and a half, a vacuum of suspense makes it feel like a much longer haul. Feet dragging its way to the finishing line, Closed Circuit doesn’t do enough to keep tensions high, and in doing so, jettisons any audience anxious for excitement.

While Bana was the sole reason I even made an effort to go see this film, as his diverse track record usually winds up more on the “hit” side of the dartboard for me, his effort here is hardly staggering. His portrayal of Rose isn’t a cop out but his character’s arc is just divinely uninteresting. Hardly moving far on the spectrum of character, he’s a man who we have to deal with more than one that we actively cheer for. Between casting concerned glances and trying not to act too concerned, he’s concerned with being concerned. Did I mention his concern? While the ultimate failure of this film can hardly be laid at Bana’s feet, I hope that he was the victim of the editing process and is as disappointed as I am in the final product.

Hall similarly is hardly of interest. Her character is a strong-female type with an upstanding moral code – a rote miscalculation of the empowered woman. She’s a bit of a question mark, albeit the familiar tropes thinly painted on her. We wind up not knowing much more about her than we did when she first appears on screen. Again, an arc is missing – another bit of paramount import thrown to the wind.

Even more frigid than these stoic cutouts is the chemistry between just about every actor sharing the screen. Hall and Bana just don’t seem to be clicking off each other, suggesting that any sort of prior relationship was as steamy as pistachio gelato. Even when they argue, the passion is absent. Dead eyes bounce off one another in scene after scene. Similarly the supporting characters rounding out the cast do little to amp up a sense of fullness.

Julia Stiles enters and exits without making a single impression, Ciarán Hinds tries to round out his unflattering role but his effort proves futile and Jim Broadbent is a shade of intimidation, although perhaps the most interesting performer onscreen just because he has a glint of something lurking behind his eyes other than concern.

Humming along like ants under a microscope, it becomes clear that the characters don’t really matter at all. They are just as much set pieces as the sound studios this was filmed in – scaffolding upon which to build a thinly veiled political message. But this deus-ex-machina doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Even though concerns over surveillance and government corruption are timely positioned with outcry over NSA oversteps, Crowley fails to illuminate the subject in an intriguing light. Accordingly, he’s proved why so many people avoid politics, because not even a movie about the subject could avoid the inevitable yawns.

So Crowley’s greatest crime is that he’s crafted a bore-fest. Political angles wrought with finger pointing are undone by naive filmmaking that supposes politicking can alone triumph over genuine thrills. It’s a cold experience, unlikely to shake up anything but a big “meh” and a feeling that more than a mere hour and a half was wasted.