Hallam Foe (2007)
Directed by David Mackenzie
Hallam's talent for spying on people reveals his darkest fears-and his most peculiar desires. Driven to expose the true cause of his mother's death, he instead finds himself searching the rooftops of the city for love.
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4 films that influenced Hallam Foe
What critics say influenced Hallam Foe
If Hallam Foe possessed itself of tighter narrative and psychological parameters, and its climaxes felt more equal in scope and in emotional heft to the film that has conveyed us toward them, the movie might amass the charge of Jacques Audiard's Read My Lips or The Beat that My Heart Skipped , whose sensory richness and offbeat character studies and enervating suspense Hallam Foe otherwise shares.
Trainspotting 's Ewen Bremner is a comic treat as Andy, timing his speeches and jokes to his own halting rhythm that adds to the riffy, unsteady power of the film.
Ace editor Colin Monie ( The Magdalene Sisters ) also jives to the film's kaleidoscopic moods and abrupt flights and drops in tone, hurtling Hallam straight out of that illicit, amber-colored prowl inside his boss's apartment and onto the gunmetal gray and unwelcoming lines of the rooftops, and playing up the mundane but nonetheless schizophrenic transition from the riotous hotel kitchen to the relentless sterility and soft hums of the residence corridors.
It also affirms the raw talents of both David Mackenzie (Young Adam) and Jamie Bell (who's come a long way since Billy Elliot).
David Mackenzie is back to some of his Young Adam tricks in Hallam Foe, and once again, the most riddlesome tricks of all are a) how he gets the movie to spring as excitingly as it does from a sketchy story with significant limitations, and b) why the movie fails to work a little better despite all the evident and encouraging talent involved.