The Safe House - Expositions

As my friend and colleague Tom Carson recently pointed out in Esquire, Robin Williams is a performer who's fully capable of giving you the creeps even when he doesn't intend to. (Patch Adams and Bicentennial Man are often cited by many, and hey, have you seen Being Human recently? Aaiieee.) Lately, between Death to Smoochy and Insomnia and this, he's been intending to, big time. More successfully stylized than the alarmingly uneven Smoochy and less emotionally direct than the brittle, tense Insomnia, One Hour Photo is a polished thriller about how the images people use to construct and define themselves can be woefully deceiving. At times looking like a more benign Dick Cheney, Williams plays Sy Parrish, a developer at a mall photo processing shop who takes a special interest in a seemingly perfect young suburban family. The Yorkins-husband Will (Michael Vartan), wife Nina (Connie Nielsen), and son Jake (Dylan Smith)-have it all, or so Sy imagines, in an eventually hilarious scene depicting him ingratiating himself into their world. When Sy stumbles upon evidence that Will is not the ideal husband he ought to be, though, Sy's indignation brings his inchoate stalker side into full bloom.

In his second feature (his first was 1985's hardly seen Static, coproduced and cowritten by star Keith Gordon), Mark Romanek, who's still a prominent video director, creates a hyperreality that's only convincing because it's so consistently portrayed; e.g., Parrish's apartment is both roomy and anally organized way beyond the limits of verisimilitude. In a sense, Romanek's formal precision is confessional; he's as much of an obsessive as Parrish is. It's an odd way to make a personal film, and some will find One Hour Photo off-putting, but I was sucked in by just about every frame.

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