FilmSnobReviews

Title: The Pale Blue Eye
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Scott Cooper
Starring: Christian Bale, Harry Melling, Lucy Boynton
Runtime: 2 hrs 8 mins

What It Is: Augustus Landor (Bale) is a rather intelligent man. One who’s been tasked with solving a very serious crime on the campus of the United States Army Academy at West Point. Someone has murdered a cadet and taken his heart. With the help of a young poet named Edgar Allen Poe (Melling), yes that one! He hopes to find the criminal so that this will happen…nevermore. But who could’ve done something like this? Something so heinous? This is what Landor is determined to find out.

What We Think: Scott Cooper has an affinity for shooting his films in a particularly dark light. Cinematographically there’s always a blackness. The other overarching fact is he always get an incredible performance out of Christian Bale. Both of these factors are once again in play and the film is better for it. Cooper’s script, adapted from Louis Bayards novel, is at some times too smart for it’s own good and other time just the right collection of words. For it’s salt the conclusion and third act are well put together even if it jumps the shark on the way out the door.

Our Grade: B+, When this film is good it is really good and when it is bad it is still pretty efficient. Henry Melling is a subtle show stealer…YET AGAIN as one of American literatures greatest poets…the perennially damned Edgar Allen Poe. A dark, haunting atmosphere settles in perfectly to tell this dark tale of murder and obsession. One that does not find itself with a true hero and many MANY villains. Villains who have intentions that can only be described as self-serving. Netflix brings us a great, brooding drama that isn’t like anything else 2022 wrought.