Murder by Numbers

Wouldn’t it be cool if this was actually a movie about murder by numbers… I mean, if, like, 47 and pi and eight-fifteenths all went out and did some killing? Unfortunately, it’s just a formulaic Hitchcock-style thriller. It’s a lot like the Clinton presidency, in that it’s never boring, but it is incredibly predictable. Director Barbet Schroeder always gives the audience more information than the characters, which I think is a mistake in this kind of film, because there’s no surprises or suspense. Still, Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt are good as the Leopold and Loeb-type murderers, and Sandra Bullock is Sandra Bullock as the maverick cop who can’t play by the rules. Watch for the shot that’s directly swiped from Vertigo, the silly back story about how Bullock became a police detective, and the cute teens whose homoerotic love can only be satisfied by murder. Or, you know, don’t watch for that stuff and go see a movie that’s a little less obvious.