Reading Killers Like a (Phone) Book
Today's review: Relentless.
Relentless has a good title and looked like it had an interesting plot, and since I’m a fan of thrillers, I figured I’d give it a shot. Once I’d finished watching, I concluded that the overarching idea was good, and there were parts that were generally well handled. But I also think that some of the finer details were a little mishandled.
We start by watching a man (Judd Nelson), who turns out to be the killer, making a phone call to a man named Todd Arthur (Patrick O’Bryan) and leaving a message on his answering machine declaring his intention to kill Mr. Arthur. Arthur wisely reports this to the police, but being overworked and with nothing more to go on than a threatening message, they kind of wave him off. That evening, the killer breaks into Arthur’s apartment and kills him with a kitchen knife from Arthur’s own kitchen, forcing Arthur to wrap his own hand around the knife hilt to add insult to injury before leaving the body and a page from a phone book behind. It’s only after this point that we’re introduced to our hero, a cop named Dietz (Leo Rossi). He moved from New York to L.A., and has only just been promoted to detective. He’s assigned to the Arthur murder case alongside his new, more experienced partner Bill Malloy (Robert Loggia), and gets frustrated when no one seems to appreciate his examining every little detail for evidence. That frustration only increases when the killer strikes again, this time killing a composer (Harriet Hall) by strangling her with a wire from her piano, once again forcing her to participate in her own killing and leaving a page from the phone book behind. With what’s starting to look like a serial killer on their hands, Dietz wants to go on a city wide manhunt, while Malloy sympathizes but explains the L.A. police generally don’t work that way. Eventually, though, the killer’s actions force Dietz to try to do things his way, even if that means going against the wishes of the department. Though the focus of the story is less about that and more about the motivation of the killer, with the two threads only really starting to intersect after a certain point. As you can probably guess, that’s one of the things I don’t think the movie quite pulls off.
I do like a lot of what the movie’s doing. The clash between differing methods or experiences can be entertaining if done right, and while it’s not explored quite as much as I’d like, Dietz and Malloy do develop a good rapport as the movie goes on (it probably helps that they’re both curmudgeonly in their own ways). Similarly, I like the interactions Dietz has with his family; it feels loving and pretty true to life. Dietz also uses some clever, if unorthodox (and possibly not quite legal) methods to track down the killer, and I’ve always enjoyed when characters think outside the box. And there was a mid-movie twist that I didn’t see coming, and I found kind of intriguing. So there’s a lot that the movie gets right.
As for what the movie gets wrong, I wouldn’t call any of them dealbreakers, but they do dampen my enjoyment somewhat. First off, we get to see the killer’s face and figure out at least part of his motivation within the first five minutes of the movie, which can work (see Columbo as a prime example of this) but which I thought was too much, too fast here. Maybe they could have let the motivation be revealed gradually and I’d have liked it a bit better. That may also have helped the motivation make a little more sense; I know what the movie was going for, but there were just enough ambiguous beats that I wasn’t entirely sure what the full story was. Still, I give Nelson credit for playing the killer in a way that sometimes made you sympathize with him while also being fully aware that he’s a psychopath.
Moving on, I’m a little annoyed by the moments where characters have to act stupid for the sake of plot or drama. For example, the killer calls Arthur and leaves a message on his answering machine, which you can probably guess comes into play later. But for all his subsequent calls, he hangs up the phone as soon as someone answers. Unless we’re supposed to infer that Arthur was his first kill and he was still figuring things out, why would the killer do it in the one case and not the others? Then there’s the point where he attacks the composer, and she runs away from him into the basement of her house. There are a whole bunch of tools and things in there, and at one point she even picks up a shovel and breaks the window to try to escape out of it. But when the killer finally reaches her basement, she’s apparently chosen to hide in her dryer, instead of holding on to the shovel and attacking him with it when he comes through the door. Yes, we can probably chalk this up to the “fight or flight” response, but there are going to be audience members who wonder why she didn’t even try to fight back, especially since she had an improvised weapon in her hand anyway. I do appreciate that you can come up with explanations for some of these moments, but I’d rather not have to do so.
While Relentless certainly isn’t the greatest thriller out there, it’s overall well made, and thus worth a look if you like thrillers. It was apparently even popular enough to spawn some sequels, though IMDB suggests they were all direct to video and the summaries don’t particularly compel me to seek them out. Still, the fact that there was somewhat of a market for sequels suggests that the original had at least a little something going for it. Certainly that’s how I wound up feeling about it.
CAT ALERT: The composer has a pet cat, which is first seen running across her piano interior and then pops up a few more times, meowing and looking up at the ceiling (where the killer is hiding). It’s not quite as good as a guard dog, but it does show cats have the potential to be effective security, too.
Relentless has a good title and looked like it had an interesting plot, and since I’m a fan of thrillers, I figured I’d give it a shot. Once I’d finished watching, I concluded that the overarching idea was good, and there were parts that were generally well handled. But I also think that some of the finer details were a little mishandled.
We start by watching a man (Judd Nelson), who turns out to be the killer, making a phone call to a man named Todd Arthur (Patrick O’Bryan) and leaving a message on his answering machine declaring his intention to kill Mr. Arthur. Arthur wisely reports this to the police, but being overworked and with nothing more to go on than a threatening message, they kind of wave him off. That evening, the killer breaks into Arthur’s apartment and kills him with a kitchen knife from Arthur’s own kitchen, forcing Arthur to wrap his own hand around the knife hilt to add insult to injury before leaving the body and a page from a phone book behind. It’s only after this point that we’re introduced to our hero, a cop named Dietz (Leo Rossi). He moved from New York to L.A., and has only just been promoted to detective. He’s assigned to the Arthur murder case alongside his new, more experienced partner Bill Malloy (Robert Loggia), and gets frustrated when no one seems to appreciate his examining every little detail for evidence. That frustration only increases when the killer strikes again, this time killing a composer (Harriet Hall) by strangling her with a wire from her piano, once again forcing her to participate in her own killing and leaving a page from the phone book behind. With what’s starting to look like a serial killer on their hands, Dietz wants to go on a city wide manhunt, while Malloy sympathizes but explains the L.A. police generally don’t work that way. Eventually, though, the killer’s actions force Dietz to try to do things his way, even if that means going against the wishes of the department. Though the focus of the story is less about that and more about the motivation of the killer, with the two threads only really starting to intersect after a certain point. As you can probably guess, that’s one of the things I don’t think the movie quite pulls off.
I do like a lot of what the movie’s doing. The clash between differing methods or experiences can be entertaining if done right, and while it’s not explored quite as much as I’d like, Dietz and Malloy do develop a good rapport as the movie goes on (it probably helps that they’re both curmudgeonly in their own ways). Similarly, I like the interactions Dietz has with his family; it feels loving and pretty true to life. Dietz also uses some clever, if unorthodox (and possibly not quite legal) methods to track down the killer, and I’ve always enjoyed when characters think outside the box. And there was a mid-movie twist that I didn’t see coming, and I found kind of intriguing. So there’s a lot that the movie gets right.
As for what the movie gets wrong, I wouldn’t call any of them dealbreakers, but they do dampen my enjoyment somewhat. First off, we get to see the killer’s face and figure out at least part of his motivation within the first five minutes of the movie, which can work (see Columbo as a prime example of this) but which I thought was too much, too fast here. Maybe they could have let the motivation be revealed gradually and I’d have liked it a bit better. That may also have helped the motivation make a little more sense; I know what the movie was going for, but there were just enough ambiguous beats that I wasn’t entirely sure what the full story was. Still, I give Nelson credit for playing the killer in a way that sometimes made you sympathize with him while also being fully aware that he’s a psychopath.
Moving on, I’m a little annoyed by the moments where characters have to act stupid for the sake of plot or drama. For example, the killer calls Arthur and leaves a message on his answering machine, which you can probably guess comes into play later. But for all his subsequent calls, he hangs up the phone as soon as someone answers. Unless we’re supposed to infer that Arthur was his first kill and he was still figuring things out, why would the killer do it in the one case and not the others? Then there’s the point where he attacks the composer, and she runs away from him into the basement of her house. There are a whole bunch of tools and things in there, and at one point she even picks up a shovel and breaks the window to try to escape out of it. But when the killer finally reaches her basement, she’s apparently chosen to hide in her dryer, instead of holding on to the shovel and attacking him with it when he comes through the door. Yes, we can probably chalk this up to the “fight or flight” response, but there are going to be audience members who wonder why she didn’t even try to fight back, especially since she had an improvised weapon in her hand anyway. I do appreciate that you can come up with explanations for some of these moments, but I’d rather not have to do so.
While Relentless certainly isn’t the greatest thriller out there, it’s overall well made, and thus worth a look if you like thrillers. It was apparently even popular enough to spawn some sequels, though IMDB suggests they were all direct to video and the summaries don’t particularly compel me to seek them out. Still, the fact that there was somewhat of a market for sequels suggests that the original had at least a little something going for it. Certainly that’s how I wound up feeling about it.
CAT ALERT: The composer has a pet cat, which is first seen running across her piano interior and then pops up a few more times, meowing and looking up at the ceiling (where the killer is hiding). It’s not quite as good as a guard dog, but it does show cats have the potential to be effective security, too.