Review
I’M NOT SCARED
Starring Giuseppe Cristiano, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon and Dino Abbrescia
Directed by Gabriele Salvatores
Opens Friday, April 30
Check listings
As a film, I’m Not Scared holds the potential of so many other great foreign thrillers. Unfettered by North American box office customs and an audience weaned on cheap thrills and erotic suspense, our cinematic counterparts overseas often avoid the gimmicks that make our thrillers so bad. In I’m Not Scared a pre-teen boy (Guiseppe Cristanio) in a remote part of the idyllic Italian countryside finds a young boy his own age captive at the bottom of a well. The mystery here is who has chained him up there and why. However, what begins as a creepy low-key puzzle slowly and surely falls flat in its execution.
That’s not for lack of trying. The film is ultimately successful in almost everything it tries to do. The cast delivers fine performances – no small challenge when you consider that most of them are children. In the lead Cristiano is aptly curious and wonderfully wide-eyed in his take on youthful disillusionment. The cinematography is gorgeous. The sun-drenched grain fields of Italy are photographed with a beautiful warm glow that is a perfect counterpoint to the underlying darkness of the storyline. In the grand scope of storytelling, the writers have built a strong framework wherein the parallel worlds of the adults and children can be examined and contrasted. Most importantly director Gabriele Salvatore manages to maintain an alarming tension, despite the fact that most of the scenes take place in broad daylight. In fact it is only when Salvatore resorts to a nighttime climax lit with flashlights and punctuated by gunfire that the filmmaker relies on a tired cliché.
Yet despite all of these elements working in its favour, I’m Not Scared ultimately fails to get under the skin. Part of the film revels in the fact that the audience and our hero know more than our villains. It may be fun to watch Cristiano outwit his foes, but it makes for an ending you can see a mile off. In that respect it becomes like so many other thrillers – visually appealing, but ultimately forgettable. |
Copyright ©2004 FFWD. All rights reserved.