From the 1909 short film by DW Griffith to his most recent foray into his character through the adaptation of a Louis Bayard bestseller, writer Edgar Allan Poe has spent more than a century plotting the history of cinema, an art die wie drunken is neither of the two genres, the fantastic and the detective, in the genesis of which the author of El cuervo stands. Adapted from The Pale Blue Eye, the original title of Bayard’s 2003 Historical Mystery novel, The Academy Murders is based on a powerful metaliterary pirouette that transforms Poe into a young and shrewd detective à la Doctor investigating a grisly murder spree. The film promises more than it ultimately delivers.
More information
The Academy Murders is a crime thriller set at the famous West Point military academy, where a tormented detective played by Christian Bale, a regular collaborator of director Scott Cooper, is tasked with investigating a series of brutal murders. Unaware of the internal life of the military institution, the detective befriends one of his cadets, a quirky and sensitive young man named Edgar A. Poe. Played by the British Harry Melling, known for his role as a child actor in Harry Potter, where he brought Dudley Dursley to life with several kilos, the character of Poe thus becomes the main attraction of a film that remains thanks to its two main actors, who, however, have a lot skate more with some luxurious supporting characters (Toby Jones, Charlotte Gainsbourg, an unrecognizable Robert Duvall…) who are capricious or, as in the case of actress Gillian Anderson, downright catastrophic. As in his Margaret Thatcher for The Crown, Anderson lets himself be carried away unbridled by the most orthopedic theatrics in a character who is perpetually out of tune.
The one-on-one between Bale, much more restrained here and just as effective as usual, and Harry Melling has its best moment in the film’s closing stages. A well-composed and photographed story remains along the way, but fails to fully grab the viewer as its complexity and narrative tension diminishes, finally being diluted in the dark path that leads to an overly forced ending.
The Academy Crimes
Direction: Scott Cooper.
Actor: Christian Bale, Harry Melling, Gillian Anderson, Lucy Boynton, Toby Jones.
Gender: Thriller. United States, 2022.
Duration: 128 minutes.
Platform: Netflix.
Premiering: January 6th.
All the culture that suits you awaits you here.
Subscribe to
Babelia
The literary novelties analyzed by our best critics in our weekly bulletin
GET IT
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits