Review of Secret Window
Year: 2004 Reviewer: Chris Docker
Johnny Depp is such a fine actor that it is hard to imagine him doing anything under par these days and, whilst he turns in an acceptable rendering of the successful, quirky, hermit author, this is sadly a film whose sum is much less than its parts. Depp plays Mort, separated from his wife and suffering from writer's block in his outback retreat. Along comes a menacing hick (played by John Turturro) who accuses him not only of plagiarism but of changing the ending of the story he has stolen. It all looks very promising entertainment and we might be tempted to forgive the fact that many of the subsequent elements seem to have been hacked from other films, but the final denouement, when the explanation for such an enticing mystery is revealed, left me cold. Using a device that has been better and more convincingly employed elsewhere, Secret Window becomes not a window into a an author's process of character creation but a see-through cop-out. If you're going to have a secret it needs to be worth knowing; Secret Window made me feel the emotional investment of wanting to know the ending was hardly worth the wait.
Rating: 5/10
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