Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman star in this thriller without thrills.
By Josh Lasser
A great cast and a great idea off of which to base a film might give one a leg up on the competition. However, those elements, in and of themselves, don’t guarantee a successful outcome. Such is the case with writer-director Billy Ray’s Secret in their Eyes.
The new film is based on the Academy Award-winning El Secreto de Sus Ojos and stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, Dean Norris, Alfred Molina, and more. It is supposed to be a taut, suspenseful thriller that examines the horror of having a loved one murdered. Instead, it is an atmospheric but murky bore, one punctuated by good ideas that are undercut by a script that can’t get out of its own way.
Secret in Their Eyes takes place in two time periods – 2002 and 2015. In the former, with the September 11 attacks still deeply affecting the country, the members of the L.A.-based Counter Terrorism Joint Task Force (CTJTF) are called in to look at a body found in a dumpster outside a mosque they are investigating. The body turns out to be that of Caroline Cobb, the daughter of Jess (Roberts), a member of the task force. Another task force member and an FBI agent, Ray (Ejiofor), takes on the case even though he’s been told not to.
Not content to simply give the 2002 story, the film constantly cuts back to 2015 where we find out that something happened to the suspected killer, Marzin (Joe Cole), but not what. We know that Jess, essentially, stopped living when her daughter died and that Ray quit the task force and went to work for the Mets. Now, however, Ray thinks he’s found Marzin once more. But, don’t ask where Marzin went to in 2002; that quickly becomes the only reason for the earlier portion of the story to exist.
We want to hear it.
It is an awkward, ill-conceived structure for a film. The 2002 bit holds little interest because with the 2015 section taking place we have the broad strokes of how the earlier era ends. As the film won’t give us the necessary details however, we are not engrossed in the 2015 story which requires only the bits being withheld as we watch the 2002 portion. Everyone in the audience knows we won’t get those answers until just before the credits roll so we all just sit and wait with ever mounting frustration.
Instead of those 2002 details we as an audience crave, in 2015 we get attempts at cute little hints about what is going to take place in 2002. We get to find out that Ray had an almost relationship with a lawyer from the D.A.’s office, Claire (Kidman), and that one of the CTJTF members, Bumpy (Norris), wound up with a terrible limp. While the relationship has the potential to be interesting—and certainly affects the case—it is a side attraction. The main event is murder investigation and we already know that the suspect doesn’t go to jail for it.
Thus, we find ourselves with a thriller where there is no thrill. Not only that, but the Ray we get in 2002, the one who refuses to proceed about the investigation correctly, who refuses to listen to his superiors, who refuses to follow any sort of protocol, is incredibly clichéd. It doesn’t get better either that he winds up quitting over the case, and that the case continues to haunt him. That, too, is clichéd.
Far and away, Kidman offers the best performance in the movie. In the unquestionable highlight of the film, Claire puts her D.A. skills to work, coaxing Marzin to talk even though he ought not. It is a smart, winning moment in a movie with far too few of them.
The only reason Secret in Their Eyes is able to hold one’s attention for any amount of time is its jumping back and forth between 2002 and 2015. Very quickly however, it becomes apparent that the movie is a one trick pony, that the jumping is all it has going for it and, consequently, that turns it into the movie’s single biggest flaw. Without the repeated jumps there is no film. The case is investigated badly and in such incredibly shallow fashion. The time jumps then are a magician’s trick, a bit of misdirection, and they don’t even work as that. Nicole Kidman may get a moment to shine, but it’s a single scene and Julia Roberts is criminally underutilized – she gets one moment of dismay early and then Jess is dead inside for the rest of the time, an empty shell, just like the movie itself.
