The Oxford Murders (2008)

[akiratubo]

Frodo and Kane team up to solve murders.  And a girl shows off her boobs.  The End.

That's really all I want to say about this lousy, er, "thriller" but I guess I should put a little more effort into it.

Elijah Wood plays, like always, Elijah Wood.  He and his creepy, bugged out eyes are at Oxford so that he can work on his thesis, which has something to do with logical sequences holding the key to universal truth.  The professor he wants to supervise his doctorate is played by John Hurt, who completely blows him out of the water every time they appear together, which is for most of the movie.  I actually feel sorry for poor Elijah.  John Hurt exudes more confidence and screen presence tossing a piece of paper in a waste bin than Elijah Wood manages for the entire movie.

When Elijah isn't getting chewed up and spat out by John Hurt's screen presence, he's usually making out with some chick with big boobs.  That's her only contribution to the movie.  She has big boobs.  Whenever she's on screen, the camera leers at her chest with even less subtlety than a 14-year old pervert.

There is another woman in the movie who gets slightly more dignity.  Her name is Beth and she's played by Julie Cox ... the only other actor in the movie to give a real performance.  Beth resents her smothering old mother.  She tries to get in Elijah's pants a few times during the movie, with little success.

There are a few other characters.  A crazy, drunk Russian, an insane man with a dying daughter, a triple-amputee, and a police detective who possesses a nose that's even bigger than Leonor Watling's boobs.  His snoz is so gigantic it simply must be fake.  I'm not sure why the production decided to augment a middle-aged British man's nose even more than Leonor Watling's plastic surgeon did her boobs.  It's really kind of creepy.

Plot?  Well, Frodo tries to get John Hurt to sponsor his doctorate, John Hurt's all like, "No," and then Beth's mom gets murdered.  Frodo and John Hurt decided to team up to solve it for no particular reason.  John Hurt claims that the killer sent him a note, a challenge to figure out the next victim.  And there's some stuff about logical sequences.  A whole lot of stuff about logical sequences.  It's actually pretty interesting for a little while.

Then the writer runs out of stuff to say about math, so here comes Leonor Watling and her boobs to tide us over for awhile.  Turns out she used to bang John Hurt.  When is not exactly clear.  At first, she talks like it was shortly before she hooked up with Frodo, but later dialogue asserts that it was when she was thirteen. (?!?!)  I just don't know.  The movie turned incredibly boring and my mind sort of went to sleep while my eyes continued to passively perceive the images on screen.

At one point, John Hurt dresses up like Guy Fawkes.  Haw haw!  He was in V For Vendetta as a guy trying to kill a guy dressed up like Guy Fawkes!  Remember that?  Huh, huh?  Do ya?  Well, do ya, dammit!  It's funny!  Laugh, damn you, laugh!

Anyway, it turns out the killer is someone that no one would have expected, except any audience members who were at least barely conscious while watching the movie (such as me).  The movie ends on a great note at least, with Frodo discovering that John Hurt was actually full of s**t for the entire movie, a pathetic old man making up a load of bull just to feel important.  And, while he's having the revelation, Boobs decides to dump him and leave him all alone, with no one but an old phony (or perhaps the clingy, unbalanced Beth) to turn to.  So, everyone got exactly what they deserved.

Except that's not where the movie actually ends.

There's an unbearably protracted "explain who really dunnit" scene.  And then it turns out to have been a waste of time because that's not really who really dunnit, so we have another unbearably protracted "explain who really, really dunnit" scene.  Then, mercifully, the movie ends.

The movie went wrong on the story level.  Someone who really, really, really had a thing for logical sequences and related mathematics must have sat down to write a suspense thriller based around his favorite subject, and somebody else decided it was good enough to film.  But, when they did a run through, they found out they only had about 45 or 50 minutes of movie.  So they went and added a bunch of superfluous crap to pad it out.  (Then, when they got John Hurt, they realized they could do a scene where he dressed up like Guy Fawkes.  Haw haw!  He was in V For Vendetta!  Why aren't you laughing?)

The direction is also overly quirky, and rather artificially so, as if the director were trying as hard as possible to make sure anyone watching would realize that, yes, this is a quirkily-directed movie.

There's really no reason to watch this.  If you like Elijah Wood, he's been in better stuff.  So has John Hurt.  And if you want to see Leonor Watling's boobs, just look them up on Google.

[BoyScoutKevin]

I haven't seen this, but I certainly agree with akiraturbo about one thing he says. You don't want an American actor to go up against a British actor in a scene. The American will get blown out of the water. While there may be others, the only two Americans I've seen who held their own in a predominantly British cast were Kim Stanley in 1964's "Seance on a Wet Afternoon" and Bette Davis in 1965's "The Nanny."

[Mofo Rising]

I liked it, or at least I recall liking it. I was a few beers in when I started it, and was more beers in when I finished.

I found it a bit of inconsequential fluff, as most of these whodunnit movies are, but I enjoyed it. I certainly didn't have any gut hatred of it.

So in contrast to akiratubo's opinion, it ain't that bad if you just want to waste an hour and a half.

[Jack]

my mind sort of went to sleep while my eyes continued to passively perceive the images on screen.

Oh yeah, I've had that happen with more than a few movies   

I added this to my Netflix streaming queue, I'll have to check it out.

[Jack]

Watched this last night, it definitely had some problems.  I guess it's adapted from a novel written by a mathematical logician - watching this adaptation is like having the kid who failed the class explaining the professor's lecture to you.  He gets some of the words right but all the concepts are beyond his understanding, so they come off as nonsensical prattle.  Or maybe the novel was just terrible in the first place;  if we're to think logically I guess that's the other possibility.  And just because logic and symbology play a part in the plot is absolutely no excuse for all the dialog in the entire movie to be about that subject.  That could have been reduced by a good 80% and it would have been a much better movie for it.

Probably the worst part though - SPOILERS - in the end we find out that all this prattle was just a smokescreen, and the mystery is actually solved by ignoring it?  And this series of symbols, which is pretty much the main point of the plot, is just some junk somebody found in an old book, and it isn't actually solvable by using logic?  Oh good grief.  END SPOILERS

Then there's Elijah Wood.  the guy's got a 27 year old head on the body of a 9 year old kid.  He's some weird genetic anomaly or something.  Yet the two girls in the movie flat-out throw themselves at him as soon as they lay eyes on him?  Heck one of them even falls in love with him before she even meets him, just from reading his renter's application or something.   

Still I didn't hate it though.  The plot kept me mildly interested despite itself.  It was a moderately enjoyable waste of a boring Tuesday evening.

[moregore]

I actually liked this movie and the chick had an awesome rack wow