There’s something ridiculous, not when it begins, but as it nears the end, that makes you want to forget quickly the crimes of the academythe first of Netflix with Christian dancewhich remains in the Top Ten of the streaming giant.

The film is full of suspense, where you have to find out who committed a murder (in the beginning, because there will be more later), but it’s not like an Agatha Christie story. The question, the reason for the discomfort, more than the discomfort, that accompanies us in those last minutes, is that nothing and no one has ever prepared us to find out who was responsible for the murder.

And he doesn’t even have the humor to do it Glass onion: a knife-edged mysteryanother recent Netflix novelty.

Cadet Edgar Allan Poe

Director Scott Cooper decided to fit in The pale blue eye (The Pale Blue Eye is its literal translation), a best-selling “historical” mystery published in 2003 by Louis Bayard, an author who likes to reinvent circumstances and events of real public figures, or well-known fictional characters.

the crimes of the academy, as the novel was also called in its Spanish edition, is set in 1830 and has Edgar Allan Poe himself among the main protagonists. But the center of attention, who carries the story forward, is not the future author of The Raven (1845) or The revealing heart (1843: the film’s original title comes from a fragment there), but the character played by Christian Bale.

The actor who was Christopher Nolan’s Batman is Detective Augustus Landor, called urgently to solve a murder. There was a homicide at West Point Military Academy. Well, the first thing they tell him is that a cadet has been found hanged. But did he commit suicide or was it a homicide?

Landor, who was somewhat retired from the profession, and who has personally suffered a lot – he is a widower and his daughter has mysteriously disappeared – feels strangely attracted to the case. The young man was not only killed, but then had his heart ripped out, it seems, in the academy morgue.

Of course a likely suspect is the local doctor, Dr. Daniel Marquis (Toby Jones, from Infamousamong many), who is married to Julia (Gillian Anderson) and has two children, one a cadet (Harry Lawtey, a name and a face to remember, because he will be Joker: Folie a Deux, sequel to the film with Joaquin Phoenix); her daughter (Lucy Boynton) breaks hearts, but she might not rip them out.

Landor is not only cheeky, but also given to drink. But being sober he meets Poe, who is one of West Point’s cadets (this information is true, as the writer was a cadet, but only for a short time). Poe has something strange – and here we could already begin to hypothesize that it has come quite far from the hair, but no, we trust Cooper and Bale-. It is not her passion for poetry, but his intuition. The way he develops an entire story, completing sentences of a few words found on a piece of paper.

Played by Harry Melling, the truth is that it’s hard not to think of his character, without arms or legs Good mealone of six tales of The ballad of Buster Scruggsby the Coen brothers. But hey, that’s something the actor who was Dudley Dorsley, Harry Potter’s kinsman, will have to carry forever.

Scott Cooper, the director of crazy heartthe movie with Jeff Bridges that won two Oscars on the same day it won The secret in their eyeshe had previously worked with Bale in The law of the strongest (2013) e hostile (2017). The director of criminal pact (2015), starring Johnny Depp, and most recently dark spirits (2021) does nothing but transfer the text of the book into images, so what is ridiculous was already ridiculous in the original.

The cast, what is called talent, is not lacking. To all those already mentioned are added Charlotte Gainsbourg (Patsy), Simon McBurney (Captain Hitchcock), Timothy Spall (Superintendent Thayer) and an unrecognizable Robert Duvall (Jean Pepe), not only because he is 92 years old.

“The Crimes of the Academy”

Regular

Suspense. USA, 2023. Original title: “The Pale Blue Eye”. 128′, SA 16. Of: Scott Cooper. With: Christian Bale, Harry Melling, Lucy Boynton, Gillian Anderson, Toby Jones. Available in: Netflix.