One Hour Photo | | Cast : | Robin Williams, Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan | | Director : | Mark Romanek | | Studio : | Twentieth Century Fox Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | September 13, 2002 | | DVD Released Date : | June 01, 2004 | | Language : | Spanish (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 26, 2005 | | Summary | A bit too linear. | Content
 | The plot line is rather linear in its development with only a 'half' twist at the end. I was surprised how little introductory scene-setting occurred with the "this is a creepy guy" feeling being thrust on the audience immediately. His over familiarity with the child was unrealistic with mothers in today's world probably being immediately wary. (Certainly my wife would be).
The film is structured very much like "Taxi Driver" with it just pottering along at a steady pace with not much driving it. But whereas Taxi Driver just suddenly explodes, knocking you off your seat; One Hour Photo by comparison just makes you get up and go to the fridge. One Hour Photo even has a pseudo-Bernard Hermann sound track of Taxi Driver.
There is a sterility of the surroundings that connects all the locations. Be it the photoshop, the shopping centre, the home (both of them), the police interview room or the hotel room. They are all bare, sterile uninviting places. The trophy wall is the only bit of visual interest in the film.
So it was all a bit too contrived, stylized and desperately linear to be very engaging. Once you get the "photo shop guy as voyeur" image, there is not much else to it. That is a shame as you think it could have been made much creeper and suspenseful. (Think of Psycho and its development of a manager of a sleepy motel...) Robyn Williams is fine in the role but he didn't have a lot to work with.
It was OK, but I don't think it was as good as many think and few will remember it in 5 years time. If you want a suspenseful creepy film with a real blast watch Taxi Driver.
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| Rating | | | Date | July 17, 2005 | | Summary | One Fine Director's Debut | Content
| I recently viewed "One Hour Photo" quite by accident, and was stunned to discover that it's a very different and far better movie than I expected. (When it was first released several years ago, the title alone was enough to make me dismiss it as probable sleaze.)
I have always respected Robin Williams' talent as a dramatic actor, as opposed to his comic/manic persona, which has never done anything but irritate me. Judging by other Amazon reviews, however, many people feel the opposite; hence, they too were misled by "One Hour Photo", but in a different way. I'm afraid this contributed to the less-than-sterling box office returns for "One Hour Photo", and I sincerely hope that writer/director Mark Romanek is not discouraged by this as his full-length feature debut. The movie is not flawless (is anything?), but I am greatly impressed by the quality of it, and Mr. Romanek's demeanor and discussions featured as extras on the DVD confirm an intelligence, maturity, and professionalism far surpassing many other young directors. I do wish, however, that Mr. Williams had refrained from so much mania on the "Charlie Rose" segment, because it was too distracting and diminished Mr. Romanek's opportunity to shine. Fortunately though, throughout the "Commentary" portion of the DVD, Williams exercises the proper restraint and allows Mr. Romanek to lead the way.
Not to mention Robin Williams' stellar performance throughout the movie itself. Here he plays the role of Sy Parrish, a withdrawn and introverted photo clerk in a Walmart-type store. Over the years he has come to feel as though he's a part of the Yorkin family, since he has been conscientiously developing their family photos meanwhile. He has fueled this fantasy as "Uncle Sy" by keeping an extra copy of the Yorkin prints for himself and displaying them on one wall of his apartment. However, the boss's detection of missing prints leads to Sy's dismissal, and this combined with Sy's discovery that the Yorkin family do not live up to his ideals is enough to push his fragile psyche over the edge.
Don't expect me to provide any spoilers; what I will say is that "One Hour Photo" is something of a subjective experience which can lead to many interpretations and thought-provoking discussions. If you don't believe me, just read the review preceeding mine! |
| Rating | | | Date | July 14, 2005 | | Summary | Sy is my hero! | Content
| Well over a year after having first watched this movie, I am still perplexed by it. The story is clearly an indictment of our pathological society, values and alienation, in which Sy Parrish is a hero of considerable stature - as well as a victim of the pathologies of others (and of society). That's the story. A classic Henrick Ibsen-style indictment of society, along the lines of A Doll's House or The Master Builder. But the treatment is something else entirely: it is an intentional villanization of this simple moral hero, in some perverse attempt to vindicate the insanity of our commericalized culture. And because of this treatment, most people don't even see the story. Some do, although Victoria Alexander, at [...], was the only reviewer I found who had the insight to understand that the villain of the piece was not Sy Parrish, but the cultural environment in which he lived (in which we all live). Most people are too much a part of that environment to see themselves.
It is so clear to me that Sy is a hero, that I wonder about writer/director Mark Romanek and actor Robin William's unstated motives in making it as they did. The backstory features on the dvd indicate that they were clearly making it as a horror picture in which Sy was the villain ... yet it is so masterfully done, I wonder if they were, perhaps, intentionally duplicitous - in order to get produced, distributed, and gain market share (and good reviews) by an entire society of producers, revieweres and consumers who are simply too witless to grasp that the joke's on them - and that their ability to be thus hoodwinked proves the thesis of the movie. If that's the case, it's likely we'll never know.
Sy Parrish is patently the odd-man-out, as would any sane person be, in what passes for human values in the uSA. There are, hopefully, many such sane people still in this country ... characters who would be right at home - and respected - in some such period as the Canadian tv series "Avalon" ... or, in general, society of 100 years past (or in the third world), yet who are too moral, too sane, and too internally healthy, to be able to cope very well in a SavMart spaceship/society, especially inasmuch as the majority of the inhabitants are seemly adjusted to their alienation, and think they possess and practice human values, rather than artificially contrived ones - leaving the hero alone and grasping at straws for "human" companionship, if only as fantasies.
Many of the Amazon.com reviewers say that they found the scenes with Sy and the young boy creepy and unsettling, and I can appreciate that any disruption of their artificial universe might be threatened by someone like Sy ... or someone from the third world for whom the commercial conventionalities of our world were seen-through, or seen as pathological. Of course, the other point is that, in regard to the technical devices of filmmaking, the makers of the film were intentionally manipulating these scenes to appear creepy to the average movie-goer by pushing all the stock Hitchcockian buttons - and doing it smoothly. Yet, if you know anything about filmmaking, you know that "creepiness" can be invoked by the camera without anything being amiss in the actual situation/dialogue/scene. And that's what is so amazing about this film - it is all a matter of perspective (except the basic story itself, which is, as mentioned, classic Ibsen, and, as such, reveals a whole different "backstory").
Sy, in doing the moral thing, after much gut-wrenching soul-searching - at the cost of his job and his freedom - is clearly a hero of rare dimensions in the modern world. So much so as to be unrecognizable by those who are used to more relativistic and amoral entertainment. True, his martyrdom was not a major thing to him - as living in our society was a form of ongoing dehumanizing martyrdom anyway for this "brother from another planet." One Hour Photo is possibly one of the greatest films of the past century, whether it was intended as such or not. And - whichever way you are able to view it - it is certainly one of the most disturbing! |
| Rating | | | Date | June 29, 2005 | | Summary | Picture perfect | Content
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It is said that an image is worth more than a thousand words. But in One Hour Photo, pictures are worth more than life to Sy Parrish.
He works in the photo-laboratory of a local supermarket. He develops the images of the people who captures with their cameras the happiest and most special moments of their lives. Sy takes his job very seriously and makes every effort to make the pictures look perfect.
The problem is that Seymour Parrish has seen already too many photos of a particular family, the Yorkins. He becomes obsessed with Nina, Will and his son Jacob, until he considers himself a member of the family. So when something good happens, he is happy for them. But if something is bad, Sy is capable of doing whatever it takes to make things right.
And that's how Sy crosses the thin line between sanity and craziness.
One Hour Photo offers a darker side of Robin Williams. The comedian and sentimental hero of films like Dead Poets Society or Mrs. Doubtfire leaves behind his do-always-good image and opts for a more aggressive role.
Mark Romanek, the director, focus the store completely in Sy; with off narrations, he describes slowly the nature of Sy's personality. Like a photo, a portrait of a repressed, egotistic, neurotic and aggressive man is revealed before our yes, leaving us with a question mark: could our life be that vulnerable?
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| Rating | | | Date | June 29, 2005 | | Summary | THE BEST CREEPY MOVIE! | Content
| ONE HOUR PHOTO IS OF THE MOST CREEPY FILMS I HAVE EVER SEEN ROBIN WILLIAMS DOES AN EXCELLENT JOB IN THIS FLICK, BUT THERE IS ONE THING I DON'T UNDERSTAND, I DID NOT UNDERSTAND THE ENDING ALL I SEE IS PICTURE OF SY PARRISH WITH THE YORKINS I SEE WILL YORKIN HUGGING SY, DO THEY RELEASE HIM OR WAS THAT PICTURE FAKE OR REAL OR JUST SOMETHING TO CONFUSE THE AUDIENCE? |
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