Red lights - 2012

My oh my, what a disappointment. What a stupid ending, so stupid I had thought of it and disregarded it at once because unacceptable! It ruined everything, the ending was so bad, so so bad, for a lot of reasons, one worse than the other. What a pity. I had better hopes - not expectations, but hopes yes, I had those. The main characters and actors are three: Dr Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) has dedicated her life to expose fake psychics for the fraud that they all are. Tom (Cillian Murphy) is her assistant, a brilliant physicist who could do anything and have whatever position he chooses and even Matheson herself wonders why he follows her. Third: Silver (Robert De Niro), a blind psychic, very famous and mysterious. Now, De Niro's presence was not a guarantee, I know, because a simple look at his filmography will clearly show that he would do practically anything. Maybe it's a sort of vanity, to prove that no matter how many bad movies he does, his reputation will always be the same because he's so great that he'll always be "the great De Niro", I don't know, or maybe he doesn't care about it at all, and follows the simple rule that he's an actor and if they offer him a movie he'll do it, who knows. Anyway, it's a bit different with Sigourney Weaver, and I say I liked everything about her character and the scenes with her, and of course how she played her role. I say she's the best thing of this movie. She's introduced as a tough woman, reasonable to the extreme, then we learn that she has a son in a coma and later on she explains to us that her child fell into a coma when he was four years old, and that if only she could believe in something more, if she could believe in an afterlife, she would gladly switch off the machines that have kept him 'alive' all these years, and set him free.
All of a sudden she looks fragile, sad, vulnerable, and yet the same scientist we saw before. A good character, 'real' and believable.
Half the movie is gone and her character dies. Yep. I couldn't believe it. She's the best part of it and you take her out??
Going on, I must talk about Tom and Silver and the plot. Tom is the most mysterious of all, but also very fond of Matheson and I liked their scenes together, when Matheson was alive, then it all went down. Why? Let me explain. Together they manage to expose every fraud, no fake psychic can fool them, but then Silver comes back. Twenty (or thirty? I don't remember) years ago he was very famous and Matheson studied his case, but the tragedy of her son had left her vulnerable and unable to work at her best. A man who opposed Silver died of a heart attack and the public kept thinking/saying that Silver had caused his death with his powers. For this reason Silver has been away from the theaters for years, but now he's back, and Tom wants to study him, but Matheson refuses. She says that Silver is dangerous because once, for just a second, he made her doubt, but I guess the pain for her son's condition had a lot to do with her choice. It would be too hard on her.
Now, what happens next? Tom goes anyway, alone. Of course he does, obviously.
He's setting up all his machines designed to discover any trick, but then Silver 'looks up' and lights explode, Tom's machines break, the audience is scared, a bit of understandable panic of course, then we see Tom going back to find Matheson on the floor. He calls for help but there's nothing the doctors can do and she dies. Just like that. I guess they made this decision to make us believe that Silver did it again, she opposed him and now she's dead.
Tom becomes obsessed with Silver and sees his presence everywhere. Strange things start happening to him, lights and noises in his house, poor birds going to their macabre death anytime he's near a window, machines breaking and that sort of things, and in his obsession Tom is sure that it's all Silver's fault. Now, to make things interesting, suddenly Silver agrees to be tested by a team of scientists, to prove once and for all his powers are real. Head of the team is Dr Shackleton, who has been looking for telekinetic powers for a long time, and every single time Matheson managed to show him the flaw in his study (although the explanation 'the subject could see the cards reflected on your glasses' was so obvious that made Shackleton look rather silly I'm afraid). Tom witnesses every experiment without finding any trick, but doesn't give up. He's determined to prove Silver's a fraud, so he takes every possible tape and has a student look at them for 'something not right', but this Ben finds nothing, probably because he was wondering if Silver might actually be 'the real thing'.
Up to this point the film still had something going, a certain atmosphere, a sense of mystery like 'is Silver a real psychic? In that case he's a murderer. Is Silver a fake? In that case, how does he do it?'
I missed Matheson a lot, but there still was something valid going on. Then it all went down so quickly. From this point on, every scene and every word is bad. Everything.
Where was I? Oh yes, Ben finds nothing and when Shackleton calls him, nice Shackleton all worried because he's about to sign the papers and declare to the world that Silver's for real, and he wants to know what did he miss, because he always missed something and Matheson would always spot it, but not Ben.
Now, ready for the downfall? Shackleton signs the papers and we see him going in front of the journalists but we're not told what'll be of him, poor soul.
Tom's love interest, a pretty girl who had no significant role whatsoever until now, suddenly proves her importance when in a few moments she can spot what Ben has been missing for hours. During a test Silver has his wristwatch on (first thing the scientists did was to take it off, why did they give it back??). She also notices that his watch is perfectly synchronized with the watch of the man doing the experiment with him (like: man sees a number, thinks of that number, Silver reads his thought and guesses, something like that). She then realizes the watches are a signal, the man is in on it with Silver! (who was that man? Did they let in a stranger in their serious, scientific study? Or is he a scientist himself, bribed by Silver, who is therefore risking his whole career for some money? Actually this could be, men do a lot of stupid things hoping or believing they'll never get caught...)
Still, Silver never touches the watch, how can he know whatever signal he's been given? Here's the big twist: the blind man can see!
.... oh my, that's so dumb. So stupid. I had wondered immediately 'Is he really blind? Are we sure of it?' but then I thought that the serious scientists were doing so much, checking the rings, checking the fingers... of course, I thought, they had a doctor check his eyes. True, it was never talked of any doctor, but come on! That's the big solution? Years wondering if he's real, how can he do it, and the solution is: he can see and he has lots of money?!? That's it? So dumb and unsatisfying.
If that was not bad enough, the story goes on showing Tom at Silver's 'show'. Tom goes to the lavatory and when he's alone a man comes in whistling (clear sign of trouble: you know the old joke, to fake indifference just whistle and look elsewhere? :-/   )
All of a sudden the man attacks Tom, tries to suffocate him with his arm, then to drown him in the toilet's water, then throws him around, and then... he simply leaves, just like that, leaving Tom coughing for breath on the floor.... I thought he wanted to kill him... otherwise what was he doing?!?
There's more: Tom gets up and goes to confront Silver. Again there's a lot of fuss in the theater with lights and electricity gone wild, then Tom throws a coin and Silver catches it in his hand thus proving he can see... so basically Silver exposes himself !?! How could Tom know? And why Silver yields so easily? Is there some big revelation that I missed, somehow?
Then, the ultimate twist, Silver shouts: "how did you do it?" because he understood that Tom was responsible for all the trouble in the theater (well, he knew it wasn't "him" ... ).
So, the big surprise is, Tom has real powers, Tom himself, and at the end Tom "talks to Matheson" saying that he spent so long with her because he was 'probably' unconsciously looking for someone like him, even though he did not know he had powers (how could he not know?). So it was not Silver, it was Tom all along, and many a bird would still be alive had he realized sooner the truth.
Tom will not reveal his powers to the public, but we can see that he goes to switch off the machine keeping Matheson's son alive, now that he's sure there is something 'more' (why? what's the strict connection between telekinetic powers and the existence of God and an afterlife?? and who gave him the right, the power, the responsibility over the guy's life?)
This is how it ends. Awfully stupid. Nonsense. This is my very-personal opinion, of course, as each and every word in this blog. I'm not a critic, I simply write for myself what I like and what I don't like, because in some time I will have forgotten.
Conclusion: my personal opinion is that this film leaves with one question in mind: why did I waste all this time watching this stuff?