After these great reviews, here is my incoherent, rambling one:
Death and the Maiden vs The Fugitive
Death and the Maiden
This film is a chamber piece for three characters: Sigourney Weaver plays a woman who is convinced that the stranger her husband meets and brings to their house during a stormy night is the man who brutally tortured and raped her many years previously.
I had big problems with this film. I found it hard to care for the characters and to be invested in the development of the plot. Even though the actors definitely deserve a lot of credit for their work with such difficult and intense characters and source material, I never really became invested in the outcome of their story. I was never quite sure what the film was trying to do: I was confused whether I was seeing a woman who tried to avenge the wrongdoings she had suffered, or a sleazy, uncomfortable tale about violence and guilt and revenge that actually smelt suspiciously of misogyny in the way that Sigourney Weaver’s character was conceived and presented. I’m not sure if my criticism should rather be directed at the play the film is based on rather than the film itself, because I don’t find many remarkable things to say about the actual filmmaking aspects like directorial style or the film’s photography.
There are surely great discussions to be had about the psychology of these characters, and about guilt and revenge and all that, and it’s perfectly possible that I am not giving this film a fair treatment, but it just didn’t work for me at all.
The Fugitive
Somehow, I had managed to never see this film before. I was hooked from the beginning, where we get the whole setup of the story in just a couple of snapshots of the night of the crime and the trial. The economy of this sequence was preserved throughout the whole film, where there is only as much dialogue as necessary, and where the pacing of the plot is almost perfect, so that the suspense can go on building and building.
Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones create characters that are incredibly memorable. The script is so subtle and understated that the few lines of dialogue always hit home perfectly. The plot was so suspenseful and well paced that I was completely gripped from the great start to the absolutely satisfying ending. Even all the necessary plot exposition near the end was handled comparatively well given how much information needed to be delivered.
Overall I think this film is probably the best action thriller I have ever seen.
The Fugitive moves on.