After a terrorist bomb attack in a crowded London market leaves over 100 people dead, a suspect, Farroukh Erdogan is immediately detained. Two top-notch lawyers and ex-lovers Martin (Eric Bana) and Claudia (Rebecca Hall) are brought together to work on the defense team. Due to the classified nature of the trial, the two of them are split into different divisions and told not to communicate while the case is ongoing but they soon find their lives in danger as the complicated web of conspiracy unravels.
What Closed Circuit fails to get right is the sensitive balance between being intriguingly complex while still keeping things clear and understandable for the viewer. It’s great if a film of this kind can keep you guessing but it’s a problem when it consistently leaves you in the dark with nothing to grab onto. The muddled plot drags along at a snail’s pace, making it seem twice as long as it’s relatively short 90-odd minute runtime, chucking up alternatively predictable and confusing plot twists that merely muddies the waters rather than raising the level of intrigue.
It relentlessly over complicates what is essentially a rather dull and straightforward conspiratorial mystery and wastes a decent premise, which is surprising since it comes from writer Steven Knight (Eastern Promises, Dirty Pretty Things) and director John Crowley (Intermission, Boy A). It starts off by showing us the terrorist attack that serves as the plot’s catalyst from various CCTV perspectives but disappointingly throws that narrative device, so to speak, out the window and ignores it for pretty much the whole rest of the movie in favour of something far less interesting.
It may have been possible to forgive the mishandled terrorism plot and plodding pace had the characters driving the drama been more interesting. But rather lacklustre performances from Bana and Hall, and wasting talents of the likes of Ciaran Hinds, Anne-Marie Duff, Julia Stiles and Jim Broadbent, makes it hard to care about them or their relationships and varying degrees of double-crossing. Only Riz Ahmed, that talented rising star of such films as Shifty, Four Lions and the recent The Reluctant Fundamentalist, approaches something of an interesting character but even he isn’t given much to work with.
What could have been a fascinating look at how Britain is one of the most watched nations in the world, with reportedly more CCTV cameras than anywhere else, actually turns out to be a rather dull and run-of-the-mill thriller with uninteresting lead characters and a plot that’s far too convoluted to actually care about – The Boring Identity, if you will. It picks up towards the end as the various events come to a head but it’s a case of too little too late. By that point nothing could have saved this sluggish, confused and confusing thriller that doesn’t have the means to handle the potentially fascinating social commentary at which it initially hints.
[youtube id=”U80b1D_q05o” width=”600″ height=”350″]
Closed Circuit is released in UK cinemas on October 25th.