Caine works up an appetite, but film fails to put enough real-event controversy in the text.
There are two kinds of justices in the world, the one that gets settle in a court room and one that ends with a bang. The Statement can be read as a observation on one of Europe’s most powerful institutions, where one man on the run (who hasn’t been punished for the horrible crimes he committed decades ago) gets chased around by a bunch of hounds sniffing him out of France’s every corner. But instead, director Norman Jewison’s thrill-less political exposé reads more like a bunch of collecting-dust-religious heads keeping their lips sealed while one man short of breath is chased about by a feminist judge with a grudge and her boy-toy official in uniform who are as incompetent as the hitmen who fail hit the nail on the head and silence the man with a bullet and an official note.
The film’s protagonist the ironically named Pierre Brossard an Englishman who doesn’t learn to speak a single word of French after 50 years in hiding played by the unfathomable Michael Caine (Secondhand Lions) interestingly comes across as both a criminal and a victim and if he had had the kind of money that Saddam had in his possession then this quick rabbit would never have gotten caught by the English hounds of a female judge and a colonel monkey in a suit played by Tilda Swinton (Adaptation) and Jeremy Northam (The Singing Detective).
Instead of a true The Fugitive type of cat and mouse game, The Statement features a couple of slow-motion back door chases and plenty of “Elvis has left the building†episodes. Ron Harwood’s screenplay seems to graze the surface of the political undercurrents and prefers to give us contemporary moments with a light manifestation of the historics of this poignant story where as Jewison fails too magnify the real controversy of the film focusing much of the film’s attention on one incredibly long case of a dulled down investigation while at the same moment trying to capture the old countryside settings and paint-chipped monasteries to match the snail pace of the film.
Played out in a bunch of dialogue driven scenes which are merely comprised of huff and puff retorts, the only suspense comes from the film’s first sequence of escape. While the numerous references to black and white flashbacks to the Nazi past and the order of execution of seven Jews drown the plot down and pound the message that this one man did something very wrong, the film throws about clues to others following his trail-in the conclusion the only people surprised by the outcome are those who pursue the old man and not the viewer. Unfortunately, the film never takes us to the emotional root of Caine’s Brossard, keeping the notion of guilt distanced from the character, we instead get his hot flashes and confessions which are just as important as the parts where he is busy tying up his shoe laces from ultimate sprints.
The film’s subplots especially in the representations of Swinton’s and Northam’s characters show a complete lack of screen chemistry, they are simply portrayed as people on a chase whose pursuit of justice is explained by a woman trying to topple more than one system. Conveniently they embark on a series of one on one rendezvous where people are unwilling to talk but gladly hand over a card with a clue showing that they don’t even need to dig up the information which falls easily into their laps. These two are quite the distraction to the film, they belt out some awful dialogue and every single time they are framed in shot reverse shot disputes with very little tension and a couple of out-of-focus two shots.
Just as bad as the photoshoped pictures on the wall and a Charlotte Rampling (Swimming Pool) in a meaningless role is the fact that the film’s narrative seems to play itself out in a part of France where the official language is English? It is these unconvincing moments and a recycling of similar personalities that clogs the film from truly investigating the inspiring source of the novel.
The Statement never soaks itself in political tension, never explores the deep-seeded rootes of corruption or the controversy of the Catholic Church, basically, it feels like a film that rushed a whole bunch of facts before the beginning became the end showing us stuff while never truly amplifying the threads to the real life case.
