"So noir...so noir..."

Honestly, if it wasn’t for this class, I don’t think I would like or appreciate this movie as much as a do. I have a feeling that I would have watched the movie, judged it on the fact that it was made in the early 1990s, hated the ending, and called it a terrible movie. However, knowing what kind of movie it is (film noir) and discussing some of the themes and messages the director was trying to convey helped open my eyes to some of the other aspects of movie making and looking a little bit past the plot, effects, and ending for a good movie.

In summary, The Player is about a movie executive – very close to losing his job - that starts receiving threatening and blackmailing postcards and messages. In his anger and anxiousness to end this harassment, he accidentally murders a writer whom he thought the messages were coming from only to find that he killed the wrong man. He starts becoming a darker, soul-less person as the movie progresses and he tries to cover up his murder. Finally, he ends up keeping his job, marrying the widow of the person he killed, and getting away with the murder that everyone knows he committed.

We talked about a lot of the different cinematic aspects of this movie which makes it good. First of all, this was a film noir movie. It’s a dark depiction of the movie industry. It shows the evil, conniving, and, often, selfish motives of the writers, directors, and executives that make movies we all enjoy. The movie plot was very dark and the ending elicits an uneasy feeling. Some of the icons that let me know this was a suspenseful film noir were the dark, shady bar that leads to the murder scene and the alley way where the murder was committed. I did not automatically think film noir, but it started to click as the movie continued. Also, The Player is a good satire of the movie industry; it shows the lack of creativity and substance in Hollywood and the selfishness of many of the people involved in making movies. I thought it was funny that almost every movie pitch was either a sequel to another movie or a blend of two completely different movies. I also liked how every writer wanted to use either Bruce Willis or Julia Roberts as their leads because they knew the audience loved those actors. Moreover, I thought the cinematography was pretty creative. There were two things that struck me as creative in this movie. First, the use of the famous movie posters to allude to the plot of the movie and give the viewer an idea of how to feel about the movie was interesting. It was blatant and bold and the first time I’ve noticed anything like that in a movie (now I’m curious to see how often directors do this). Second, there are a few scenes where the sound and focus shift from something in the foreground to something in the background, vice versa. I liked that a lot. It was very striking, especially in the opening scene (which was an amazing single shot).

Overall, I liked this movie. Like the ones before, it was very eye-opening for me.