Review: A Kind of Murder
"Proof is not the key thing. It's doubt," Mitchell Kimmel (Eddie Marsan) tells Walter Stackhouse (Patrick Wilson) late in A Kind of Murder, the film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1954 novel The Blunderer. These two men's paths cross before they ever meet one another and it is to the film's great discredit that, when the two are finally and irrevocably entangled, it is with little of the psychological tension that marks Highsmith's work.
Like Highsmith's Strangers on a Train, A Kind of Murder concerns two men with murder on their minds. Mitchell is a rare bookstore owner whose wife's body has been recently discovered at a roadside diner. The murder has merited some column inches in the paper, where it catches the eye of Walter, a married architect whose true passion is writing mystery novels. Walter, who tosses the newspaper clipping of the murder amongst numerous other collected clippings of such killings, believes the wife's husband is guilty, he even has a strong theory on how the husband could have done it. He's not the only one to believe Mitchell guilty - Detective Lawrence (Vincent Kartheiser) knows that Mitchell is behind it despite Mitchell's very solid alibi.
"What's the difference between wishing someone dead and actually doing something about it?" Walter ponders. There's a certain admiration he has for a husband that has put thought into action. Walter himself wishes he had the fortitude for his four-year-long marriage to Clara (Jessica Biel) is becoming more and more untenable. Clara is unhappy and refuses to seek medical help to uncover the source of her unhappiness; she'd much rather pout, belittle her husband about his writing, or accuse him of having an affair with Ellie (Haley Bennett). The fact that he is indeed having an affair doesn't bode well for Walter when Clara ends up dead at the exact roadside diner where Mitchell's wife was found.
Yet Walter isn't guilty, not technically anyway, but when Detective Lawrence uncovers that the two husbands have met, Walter has the newspaper clipping of Mitchell's wife's murder, and that Walter has been messing around with Ellie, it doesn't stop the detective from using both men against one another, a gambit that will prove fatal for one or both suspects.
A Kind of Murder is certainly very pretty to look at. Cinematographer Chris Seager contributes many an artful composition, production designer Pete Zumba provides a strong period flavour as does costume designer Sarah Mae Burton. Director Andy Goddard is more than competent with his handling of the material, but he doesn't unearth the tale's complexities. The beauty of Highsmith was her ability to make you sympathise with the devil, to make you understand a murderer's motivations, to normalise monsters. That's why Tom Ripley remains one of her best creations - Ripley was a sociopath and yet you comprehended and even supported his misdeeds whilst being revulsed at the same time.
Neither Mitchell nor Walter are engaging enough to elicit our interest, nor is their eventual dilemma handled with enough finesse to provide the frissons of suspense and horror their situation should evoke. Whether that's due to the performers, the director or the screenplay is highly debatable. The success of the rest of the actors, on the other hand, is more cut and dry. Kartheiser and Biel appear to be playacting, and not very well at that. Bennett makes for a lovely other woman, but seems at a loss as to what she's doing there.
A Kind of Murder
Directed by: Andy Goddard
Written by: Susan Boyd; adapted from The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith
Starring: Patrick Wilson, Eddie Marsan, Jessica Biel, Vincent Kartheiser, Haley Bennett
