The Fourth Man

This supposedly noir film has potential but quickly falls away, it is trite, predictable, a faux European confabulation of nonsense.

There are many films that ask more questions than they answer themselves or wish their viewer be concerned with (e.g. the films of Hitchcock, which this film pays homage to), but this one fails by lacking an interesting journey or even being well-made. Although deliberately kitsch and ridiculous (at least I hope the extremely obvious and repetitive symbolism wasn't supposed to be taken seriously...), I get the impression that its boring meandering to nowhere was not intended.

It's a genuine mystery to me why it has international acclaim. It's like a low budget, exploitation take off of the kind of films Brian De Palma made for a short while (e.g. 'Body Double'). Nudity, homosexuality and gore pop up every 5 minutes or so in the most juvenile way and there are shots that seem like attempts at Scorsese-esque kinetic cameras, except they are poorly executed and often unnecessary (a shot in which a camera moves from a clock face to Christine after she has interviewed Gerard, for example). I seriously suspect its acclaim has more to do with being a foreign film (the acclaim seems to come more from the US and UK than Holland or elsewhere) and full of Christian allusions critics are too afraid to question (these allusions are too frequent, too heavy and often too incoherent) than being a well-made film.

In short, I was expecting exhilarating trash like Verhoeven's 'RoboCop' and 'Basic Instinct' - e.g. bad cinema made good by an inventive, enthusiastic director, cast and crew. This is just as B-movie-esque but nowhere near as fun or as well-constructed.

Early Paul Verhoeven outing. Boring and very obvious. A black widow type scenario that is highly unoriginal. Becomes very tedious very quickly. If this did indeed win Paul Verhoeven international acclaim I fail to understand why...regarding references to christian symbolism and homoerotica, again they're not affronting nor interesting. And who was responsible for the atrocious special effects???? 1 star. Dutch. Subtitled.

I rented this after seeing the first half of the movie over 7 years ago and never seeing the end. So... was I disappointed? Not terribly, the movie holds together, the symbolism is a bit obvious and could have been subtler. But yeah, I suppose i'd watch it again.