2008 Woodie Awards
Depp's acting not exciting enough
Movie: Koepp's 'Window' loses to King's novel
By: Cristian Vasquez
Issue date: 3/18/04 Section: The Arts
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With a good story line but a mediocre performance by Johnny Depp, "Secret Window," directed by David Koepp, is a slow movie with a predictable outcome that had the potential to be a great film.
Depp's performance comes nothing near to his best actor nomination for "Pirates of the Caribbean" and bores the audience as the movie drags on from scene to scene.
The story line was well intended, but the adaptation to the film was poorly done, not so much by bad acting as much as by bad directing.
Depp plays the role of Morton Rainey, who is a writer going through a divorce after he catches his wife in bed with another man.
Slowly, Rainey begins losing his mind as he talks to himself throughout the film.
Signs of his delusion are scattered throughout the movie, but it isn't very clear until the last couple of scenes.
Rainey becomes the character he creates in one of the stories he wrote and struggles with the ending of the story.
However, the story Rainey wrote is the situation between him and his cheating wife but in his book, the wife is killed and buried in her garden. Slowly but surely, the character in the book takes over Rainey and convinces him to fix the ending, not of the story, but of his life.
He uses a character he created to justify the deaths of those around him and to convince himself that the best thing to do is to kill his ex-wife and her new boyfriend.
It is a case of split personalities in which Rainey can still tell right from wrong but is overwhelmed by his impulses and convinces himself that he is the victim of a stalker.
In reality, he is only stalking himself and he can't face his own flaws to fix his own life.
The best part of the film is John Turturro's performance that overshadows Depp's every time they share the screen.
Tuturro plays the role of John Shooter, a middle-aged man from Mississippi, who accuses Rainey of stealing his story but in reality, Shooter is the character created by Rainey.
Depp's performance comes nothing near to his best actor nomination for "Pirates of the Caribbean" and bores the audience as the movie drags on from scene to scene.
The story line was well intended, but the adaptation to the film was poorly done, not so much by bad acting as much as by bad directing.
Depp plays the role of Morton Rainey, who is a writer going through a divorce after he catches his wife in bed with another man.
Slowly, Rainey begins losing his mind as he talks to himself throughout the film.
Signs of his delusion are scattered throughout the movie, but it isn't very clear until the last couple of scenes.
Rainey becomes the character he creates in one of the stories he wrote and struggles with the ending of the story.
However, the story Rainey wrote is the situation between him and his cheating wife but in his book, the wife is killed and buried in her garden. Slowly but surely, the character in the book takes over Rainey and convinces him to fix the ending, not of the story, but of his life.
He uses a character he created to justify the deaths of those around him and to convince himself that the best thing to do is to kill his ex-wife and her new boyfriend.
It is a case of split personalities in which Rainey can still tell right from wrong but is overwhelmed by his impulses and convinces himself that he is the victim of a stalker.
In reality, he is only stalking himself and he can't face his own flaws to fix his own life.
The best part of the film is John Turturro's performance that overshadows Depp's every time they share the screen.
Tuturro plays the role of John Shooter, a middle-aged man from Mississippi, who accuses Rainey of stealing his story but in reality, Shooter is the character created by Rainey.