People are voting emotionally.

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Very ironic that it was based on a novel called "The Blunderer" as it was a mess at every turn.I'm guessing but being that they somehow had the authentic locales, wardrobe and the shockingly numerous vehicles of the times, tried to build a movie around those. Or just didn't care about anything else. Even that failed as there were countless wide shots that should have been nice but just didn't work. The broad strokes were the actual direction that only essentially employed wide shots of interactions between characters with very few close-ups when close-ups are what these "noirs" rely on most. A vast majority of the dialogue and plot were delivered in a matter-of- fact way that completely ignored subtleties and nuances. Eddie Marsan and Vincent Kartheiser at least made a half-hearted attempt to act while the rest of the cast and leads essentially walked through the piece.(Being that the whole thing was delivered in a very flat manner and the prevalence of foreign money in films, I have to speculate that had an influence as some foreign films have that kind of storytelling. Further research showed it had Japanese, Philippine, Singapore, Middle Eastern and German money behind it. But there was a very stark example of such in a movie called Child of God by James Franco and had a prevalent Chinese company, Well-Go USA, behind it. It, too, was a period piece in the 50s South but extremely esoteric and the last thing you'd think Chinese audience would relate to. And of course the obvious Marvel and Transformers films.)Even the snow was bad as it often had a snow effect but none to very little snow on the ground. Jumping to the end, it also ignored the tried and true rule about this genre. The killer is always the one you least expect. But no, it was the first person you expected and was completely devoid of being clever. And it never answered the question about the Biel's death. I GUESS it was suicide although never clarified such. We are introduced to Wilson's eventual love interest Bennett in a completely non-dramatic way. He is not shown to be smitten or awestruck. She just---appears. They have a conversation and she leaves. Biel is jealous.And then the rest was just sloppy nonsense. We see the killer obviously set up an alibi by making himself known to the kid in the movie theater. He then leaves and it looks like he's up to no good. In all but this movie, that turns out to be a red herring. But here? No. He is actually the bumbling killer who ended up murdering his wife in a very sloppy and public way. Then we see a few scenes where the killer and the kid seem to have some sort of arrangement or agreement about all this. In vague terms, the kid is on the killer's side. But does he know the killer is actually the killer? Just bumbling nonsense.Bennett then shows with the potted planet and seems to flirt with an uninterested Wilson, who then shows up at her singing gig. It's at THAT point that we see he is smitten. For a very long time we do not see either Wilson or Bennett together whatsoever. No reason to think anything has happened. Biel insists that she followed her husband to Bennett's apartment. (In what? They have one car. She took the bus to her mother's house.) I got the impression that she was just crazy as we the audience did not see any further interaction between the two.But no. That did in fact happen as we find out much later in flashback.Wilson follows Biel on the bus and loses her somehow and we are never told how. He quickly makes himself known to a witness but lies about it to the detective later. Even though the detective easily finds out Wilson is lying, Wilson continues to lie (about the bookseller/murderer) coupled with being very obvious about his new girlfriend and telling everything to his supposed best friend.And where did Bennett hide in Wilson's house when the detective showed up?Frustrated and at the end of his rope, the detective then somehow enrages the killer with a feeble argument about class-ism so the killer then can go after Wilson. Sure enough, the killer does that and, for some reason, chases Wilson out of a very public bar and into the shadowy catacombs that were apparently adjacent and very accessible to this bar. Police of course close on their tails.A little point about wearing glasses, which the killer did. The cop crushed the glasses under his foot (off-camera) and the killer was without his coke bottle specs. But this didn't seem to slow him down one bit. Anybody who wears glasses would call BS on this one.Miss it. Don't waste your time unless you like laughing at bad film making.

Best movie I seen in years. The bad reviews? It's simply not for attention-deficient, thrill junkies who play video games all day. This film builds tension slowly and believably in the Hitchcockian tradition (which makes sense since it is a script from the one of Hitchcock's favorite script writers, Patricia Highsmith). It is beautifully filmed, with rich sets and fabulous, era-perfect costumes and props. The performances are all flawless. It's a great script full of psychological tension that builds to a dramatic and poetic ending. Film buffs will love this movie.

I haven't read the source material nor seen a movie this is supposedly a version of (according to IMDb). So I can only speak for this movie on display right here. The fine acting is one thing, but what really got me was the script. It is ambiguous and very woven to say the least. Predicting things may seem easy, but in the end, maybe it isn't? And that's something I really enjoyed during watching.Having said that, there are a few things that seem easy to spot. It's a murder mystery, there are seemingly over the top characters involved and some sketchy themes running through it all. The final shot is mesmerizing to say the least and makes the mind wander ... and wonder too!

I loved the look and texture of this movie. It is beautifully noir without silly overacting and over-the-top scoring (as in De Palma's "Black Dahlia").In the story two suspects in two separate suspicious deaths are pursued by an obsessed detective. The detective, played by Vincent Kartheiser, is smart, sardonic and ruthless... oh yes, and patient.Of the suspects, Marty Kimmel (Eddie Marsen) is a bookish bookseller intent upon getting away with the murder of his wife. He is a sociopath and, as is the case with sociopaths, considers himself superior to the rest of humanity. Walter Stackhouse (Patrick Wilson), is guilty only of wishing his wife were dead. When she commits suicide, his guilty conscience motivates him to make a number of bad decisions which seem to implicate him in her death.Largely, by ironic coincidence, these two men's lives are entwined: Stackhouse becomes fascinated by Mrs. Kimmels murder after reading about it, both women will die outside the same restaurant after riding on the same bus (on different nights), both husbands will follow the bus to the restaurant on the nights of the two deaths.With the detective acting as a catalyst, the two husbands play out their stories. One acts out of ruthless self-preservation, the other out of neurotic, and unjustified, guilt. How wonderfully noir can you get? As we watched, my wife mentioned similarities between this movie and some Hitchcock films. We had just watched "Vertigo" a couple of nights before and I had rolled my eyes through it: Jimmie Stewart being duped when he obviously should have known better and all the messy details being tied up neatly in one short scene at the end. I am not a fan of Hitchcock. To me, this film succeeded in doing what Hitchcock often tried to do--providing reasonable inner motives for unreasonable acts.There are some actions in the movie that don't seem logical at all to me. Maybe I need to watch it a second time. Still, there is a general sense that the characters' emotional states might precipitate those actions, though they are illogical.One comment to blanch-2 in her review, "A Kind of Mess" (love that title), The Chevrolet commercial is not part of the movie "Butterfield 8", it was meant to be part of the pre-movie attractions, along with the newsreels and cartoons often commercials were shown. The fact that the two husbands unknowingly sit a few seats apart as they watch this film is a nice creepy touch.To sum up, this film may not hold together the very best when it comes to sequencing but I think it is well worth the time taken to watch it.