Review: The Two Faces of January

The murderer is Chester MacFarland. His accidental accomplice is Rydal Keener. The object of Rydal's desire: Colette, who happens to be Chester's much younger wife. The year is 1962. Greece and Turkey serve as backdrops for first-time director Hossein Amini's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's literary psychological thriller.

The victim is a private eye, who's caught up to and confronted Chester (Viggo Mortensen) with his shady financial dealings back in the States. The death is accidental and bloodless enough that Chester's convinced his wife (Kirsten Dunst) that the victim is temporarily unconscious rather than permanently lifeless. Rydal (Oscar Isaac), a small-time swindler the couple met earlier during their tour of the Parthenon, helps Chester in disposing of the body and, upon learning the truth behind the murder, agrees to secure fake passports and an escape route for the panicked couple. As the trio evade capture, paranoia percolates and motivations become ever more unclear.

The burgeoning tension dominates the first half of the film; Amini (best known for scripting The Wings of the Dove and Drive, amongst others) exerts a capable touch. To wit, this sequence: Chester is observing Rydal from inside of a cramped bus. Rydal is reading the newspaper, slowly realising the consequences of his involvement. There are some police officers nearby; he takes a step in their direction. Will he give up Chester and Colette? What will Chester do? Or another sequence in which Chester emerges from the labyrinth that is Knossos, his face lit only by a lighter, thinking he's solved one problem only to cause another, more tragic one. The stomach churns, the breath catches and applause must be given for Amini's elegant execution of such moments.

Less elegant is the handling of Dunst's Colette. To be fair, women for the most part were given short schrift in most of Highsmith's works, serving only to be disposed or tolerated. There were hints of Colette's penchant for infidelity in the novel, which fuelled Chester's already distrustful view of Rydal. The movie remains near mute on this, only proferring one scene where Colette's talk of strolling with Rydal thickens his room with promises of a tryst. The triangle suffers a bit as a consequence; the film only genuinely snaps into focus once Colette recedes from view.

As well it should. Think of the main couplings in previous film adaptations of Highsmith's works: Guy Haines and Charles Bruno in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, or Tom Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf in René Clément's Plein Soleil and Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley - men who find that morality is a slippery slope and any action, no matter how questionable, can be reasoned away. The beauty of these couplings is the harder one tries to get away from the other, the more they become intertwined.

Chester and Rydal are a second-rate pairing by Highsmith's standards - there's a father-son dynamic written in that never completely gels - but it is still fascinating to watch them in their scramble for survival.

The Two Faces of January

Directed by: Hossein Amini

Written by: Hossein Amini, adapted from Patricia Highsmith's novel The Two Faces of January

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, Oscar Isaac