The Pale Blue Eye Review

 

The Pale Blue Eye is a mystery thriller film based on Louis Bayard's 2003 novel of the same name. The movie's produced by Cross Creek Productions, Steamline Global Grouo, and Le Grisbi Productions and distributed by Netflix. The Pale Blue Eye is written and directed by Scott Cooper.

The story is in 1830, veteran detective Augustus Landor has been asked by the military to investigate an apparent suicide at the United States Military Academy. Landor finds out, it wasn't a suicide but also sees that the body's heart was taken. Soon both him and young cadet Edgar Allen Poe work together to who the killer is, what's their motive, and try to stop more murders from happening.

Initial Reaction

The reason why I watched this movie and decided to review it was because of Christian Bale. He's a great actor, and ever since I saw him in The Dark Knight Trilogy way back when, I've been curious of his other projects.

Cons

I've got nothing here, move on to the next part.

Middle Ground

One thing I wished the movie did more with was the characters. We do get some backstory and such with them, but by the end of the movie there still felt like there could've been more. The other slight issue was the mystery. Overall it's still good, but there are bits and pieces where it does lose steam. So I think with a rewrite or two, we could've gotten something that would've kept us interested throughout the film, instead of every now and then.

Pros

One thing to love about the movie was the look. I'm by no means an aficionado on the 1830s, if anything I probably have a bare bones knowledge on that era, and that's me being nice about myself, but I think The Pale Blue Eye did a really good job capturing the look and anesthetic of that time. I also really liked the pacing. It wasn't by any means slow, but it also wasn't a breakneck fast pace adrenaline ride. If anything it's pacing might best be described as, it's taken its time, while also not wasting both its time or yours. It goes by a pretty good pace. I also want to give credit to the atmosphere. After we get to the first corpse, throughout the movie there's definitely a feeling of uneasiness, even when you're lead to believe there shouldn't be. The last thing I'll get the movie more positive points is of course our main stars, Christian Bale and Harry Melling. Christian is of course amazing in his role, and Harry definitely deserves a lot of credit. There were quite a few times when he could be a scene stealer. And both Christian and Harry had some really great scenes together. These two are the highlight of the film.

While The Pale Blue Eye had some issues, I still found myself enjoying it despite those slight problems. Does that make me forgive it completely? No, but I will give it a slightly high rating, because there was still quite a lot to enjoy here.

My final rating is Good.

That's going to do it for me. Come back on Monday, Jan 16th, for my Cinematic Disaster review of....Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star...oh boy, that movie...Until then, enjoy the rest of your movie.