Maidgethma Wonderfully offbeat film!

Micitype Pretty Good

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

sgcim I was very disappointed by this adaptation of the great Borges short story. The choice of Peter Boyle for the lead role of the detective was an extremely poor one. He removed any of the irony of this send-up of Sherlock Holmes, and ruined any chance for this film to work. The overdone acting, direction, and additions to the plot also sent this film straight into the trash heap. The rock music used in the score seemed particularly out of place. Although I liked Repo Man and Sid and Nancy, the director seems out of his league when he tries to adapt a short story like this for the screen. I don't think there's any point in making a full-length feature out of any of Borges' work. A short film or a collection of short films on other short stories of his would have been better.

MisterWhiplash I respect Alex Cox the filmmaker, I really do. He's like the kid at school who you think at first is just trying a little too hard to be "different", a literary punk-rocker who has dipped more than his feet into spaghetti westerns and science fiction and fringe-culture and come out into the world ready to take s*** on... but then you see what he can actually do, the talent and raw feverish artistry and moments of true absurd hilarity capable of him, and you are ready to see whatever he has to offer. But there's two sides to his proverbial coin: he can either really hit it out of the park (Repo Man, Sid & Nancy, Walker arguably) or just try just a little too hard and pull way too many pretentious rabbits out of the hat (Straight to Hell). Death and the Compass falls into the latter category, and while I respect its (mostly) original approach to tackling a detective-killer story, it too falls on its face and its weirdness becomes oddly dull.It has a strange enough set-up and already irreverent style to follow: a detective, Erik Lonnrot, is after a killer with a hell-fire voice, Red (something), and it seems that the killer is leaving disturbing clues with his victims: scrawled in blood on the walls are messages that, according to eyewitness Alonso Zunz (Christopher Eccleston looking as if he just walked off Shallow Grave without changing his look) has religious significance in the Kabbalah. We follow Lonnrot on his case, and his methods of going after the perp, which include following at first a triangular and then compass-shaped pattern on the map- this despite the protests of the flabbergasted Commissioner Treviranus (Miguel Sandoval), who also looks back in flash-forwards sitting at a desk and speaking to the audience in garbled but sad descriptions of his former employee and colleague after the fact of the case.Oh, Cox has his moments of creativity and interest, such as a shot where we see the entire scope of the harrowing depths of the police station where Eccleston's character is taken in by handcuffs ("For his own protection" says Lonnrot in case of getting lost in the wrong room) and we're followed in a long tracking shot- maybe the best or just most curious- where we're taken through very dark hallways with very little direction, lost in the maze of turns and oddities among the characters. And it's never something that isn't fascinating to *look* at, with Miguel Garzon's cinematography a morbid delight. But The plot goes through hoola-hoops to keep things so off-beat it might as well be beat-less all-together. The performances, save for a confident Boyle and for Eccleston at the very end, are pretty bad, especially Sandoval who just seems to squirm in his seat reciting the goofy dialog given to him to speak at the audience.While the murder plot itself contains an intention for the audience that this isn't something we've seen before, that it's in a society with a good many rioters and architecture suggesting Alphaville's next decrepit wave, it too fizzle's out very quickly. What's the conflict here? I was never that much engaged with Boyle's own personal mission to find this killer, and only mildly caught up in the few flashes of deranged scenes of the killer (and/or killers) going after people like in the building early on (Cox himself has an amusing cameo). And just when I started to think it was leading up to something spectacular, with Boyle and Eccleston in that big ("not as big as you think") building in the South section of the city, it suddenly gives us a "TWIST" that we know in the back of our minds is coming but hope isn't, and it deflates any of the humdrum mystery it's been leading up to. For all of Cox's uncanny touches as a filmmaker, for all of his opposition to spoon-feeding the audience with a 'conventional' approach, which I do respect, Death and the Compass ultimately cuts one off at the brain-stem; it's masturbatory.

John Seal This wilfully bizarre adaptation of Borges short story is typical Cox. His strong visual sense is, as usual, undone by the appalling half baked acting of most of the cast. The film is definitely in the surreal tradition of Bunuel's Mexican period, and looks at times like a poor man's take on Lars Von Trier's Elements of Crime. Cox's apparent preference for single takes, jump cuts, and ambient sound recording all work against the film's effectiveness. Worth a look but ultimately disappointing.

barfly99 As I write this only a few other people have ever voted for DEATH AND THE COMPASS, so I must assume that only a relatively tiny proportion of film-lovers have had the opportunity to watch this movie. Which is a shame, because it's an extremely good film. I actually only saw it myself by accident, as it were, at the London Film Festival three or four years ago after Alex Cox had entered it as a replacement for THE WINNER, which he had withdrawn, feeling it had been ruined by studio interference. And DEATH AND THE COMPASS is up there with his best work, at times surreal, but always clever and involving, and full of memorable sounds (that voice-over at the beginning!) and images (and what about those police cars!). Cox always casts great actors, and having Peter Boyle and Christopher Eccleston on board ensures the twisting story-line is enthralling right up to its quite stunning finale. Even if it gets the recognition it should, I don't think this will ever be prime time viewing material, but if quality counts for anything perhaps it should.