Year:
1998
Studio:
Universal Pictures/Imagine Entertainment
Movie:
3/5
DVD:
4/5
Teaser
Marion Crane (Anne Heche) is a pretty young woman living in Phoenix.
She has a boring job at a real estate agency and a handsome boyfriend
in Sam Loomis (Viggo Mortensen), who owns a store in California that he
must return to -- oh the life of toil for someone deep in debt. But
Marion has a plan. Well, not so much a plan as an opportunity. A
wealthy Texan wants to buy property and he has the $400k in cash to do
it. But it's late Friday and Mr Lowery (Rance Howard) would rather not
have the cash left in the office the whole weekend so can Marion
deposit the cash in the bank on her way home?
Of course, says Marion, who promptly skips town with the cash on her
way to see her boyfriend and come to his rescue. Several paranoid
encounters later Marion stops at the Bates Motel for the night. There
she meets Norman Bates (Vince Vaughn), a quirky mama's boy with a gay
attitude. You can check in but you can't check out as Marion becomes
the first victim in the movie. Of course people are looking for Marion
and the money which is going to bring more victims to the Bates Motel.
Movie
This version of "Psycho" is not so much a remake of the original
classic as it is a reshooting. They worked with the original script and
did almost all the same shots and cuts as the original. I remember when
it was being made how people were incredulous that someone would want
to not only redo a classic, which is seldom done, but reshoot it in the
exact same way as the original.
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Since I
haven't seen the original I can't make a direct comparison. But
based on the documentary feature and the movie commentary, even though
it is shot the same the nuances are different. This'll probably be a
good study of how you can shoot the same movie and come out quite
different. Norman Bates is gayer, Sam Loomis is less aggressive and
more of a "hey baby" type of guy, Lila Crane is much more aggressive
and there's a certain lesbian overtone to her character (though I
didn't notice, I got that from the commentary).
Actors
Vince Vaughn puts in a great fidgety, awkward, sexually repressed
performance. Anne Heche also did a good job and she had a lot of
emoting to do. Julianne Moore (playing Lila Crane) on the surface was
ok. If the commentary hadn't pointed out the subtlety of her
performance I would have left it at that. Viggo Mortensen is great. He
plays it so serious. William H Macy (Private Investigator Milton
Arbogast) once again has a great small role and gets killed.
DVD
The movie is in wide-screen format. The commentary track is done by
Director Gus Van Sant and Actors Anne Heche and Vince Vaughn. It is
quite entertaining, and it sounds like everyone enjoyed the movie.
There is a Psycho Path 30 minute documentary and the theatrical
trailer. A Windows screen saver, production notes, and cast and film
maker bios round out the extras. Annoyingly, every time you hit the
main menu it goes through a 10 second intro sequence. I'm also not fond
of random advertisements when you initially start the DVD (though at
least you can skip these).
Recommendations
Overall it's still a good movie. I'm not too sure how much people
who've seen the original will appreciate it. But it is suspenseful and
still has that Hitchcock flavour. Worth watching once. |