Impressions....

have you ever seen Williams on the tonight show ??... he is nothing but jokes and attention and everything comedian ... seeing how he acts in such a serious role must be quite a feat for him to pull off... his role in Insomnia made me wonder how well his acting was .. because it seemed like he didn't pull off his role that seriously, just because of his nature any slight comedic act by his character would show up as a slip of acting ...

One Hour Photo is a completely different role .... Robin Williams definetly challenged himself and succeeded in my opinion ... the main character, Sly Parish, a 40 something year old lonely man .... his life is photographs... he thinks in photography... his job is at the one hour photo in the local savmart for the past 11 years... his deep seeded past is never explained nor touched ....

but during his 11 years at savmart he has developed a taste for no explained reason with Nina Yorkin... he has followed the life of her and her husband, along with their child through all the pictures they've developed over the years... he obsesses over their life.. he wishes he was part of their family ... his eye's light up when Nina drops off another batch of photo's for him to see... and he makes an extra set for himself... Sly see's and creates his life around the people and things he see's in the photo he publishes...

the movie sets an atmosphere that relates much to normal life ...the department store Savmart is nothing more than a sterle walmart... although the director most likely did this intentionally... Sly works in a carbon cut manufactored shopping warehouse where drones enter with shopping needs, and exit satisfied... savmart is not reality ... everything has its own specific row.. nothing is out of place... everything is as it should be... in reality a department store has things on the floor... nothing is shelved orderly.. and you have complexity of detail .... savmart is as fake as the made-up name suggests...

continuing with the 'normal life' atmosphere.. there are a number of popular items used in the background... at home after a day of work Sly watches an episode of the Simpsons, that the director was trying to use for some metaphor i guess... it did not fit at all... little Jake Yorkin finds an Evangelion figure at Savmart that he wants his father to buy for him ... in one of Sly's fantasies Jake has a Gundam Model that he asks for help in building .... they have these coined brand name items in the movie ... yet they don't have a label for the kind of film they use... or a kind of camera... but does the budget have to effect the quality of the movie ?? ... no it doesn't really effect it at all ... it just bothers me a little how their prop budget was so loosely dispersed...

the overall story of the movie isn't too hard to figure out except for the questions they delibertly don't answer... like Sly's childhoood and past before Savmart... or how he met the Yorkin's to begin with ... director Mark Romanek should have expanded on this, yet he left it wide open for speculation ....

overal this movie is interesting but very unfinished... so much was not done in the movie that could have added so much to it .... it seems alot like the director was trying to do something but it just came out wrong ... oh well, great effort, man... i'll be sure to catch your next film to see how you're coming along ...

- Dyre - 10.24.02