Holy Crap!* - Brian DePalma's "Passion"

Where do we begin with Brian DePalma's cheap, hackneyed attempt to interpret a French thriller while still clinging to frayed threads that once connected him to Hitchcock.

The writing is execrable. The acting is laughable. The attempts at intrigue and tension fall flat. The plot often makes no sense. The camera work is uninspired. The colors are washed out. This is a Hitchcock effort on an Ed Wood budget.

Rachel McAdams is supposed to be a high-powered ad exec in, for some reason, Germany apparently (Berlin? But where everyone speaks English) who is scheming to get back to the big time in New York by stealing the idea of an underling played by a painfully out-of-her-depth Noomi Rapace ("The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"). McAdams is also helping her sleazy boyfriend siphon money from the agency. The boyfriend, Dirk, is played by the wooden, grimacing Paul Anderson, whose take on the villain here is about as convincing as that found in a silent film. Only Karoline Herfurth, as the stereotypical pining lesbian, escapes with her dignity intact.

At least we now know that McAdams can't carry a film. And could it be the language barrier or is Rapace just a bad actress?

It often reminded me of the old "Second City TV" sketch "Bad Acting in Hollywood." Some segue-ways will make you scratch your head. The lip-stick lesbian scenes will make you snicker.  The multiple "it was just a dream" tricks will have you rolling your eyes. DePalma's tiresome obsession with shoes and lipstick might creep you out.

This wanna-be thriller runs out of gas about two-thirds of the way through, as it disintegrates into a dull police procedural, in which folks start speaking German. To keep a semblance of a plot alive, DePalma (making "Dressed to Kill" seem like it was released centuries ago) tosses in a grab-bag of plot twists willy-nilly, desperate to entertain us.

But suffering through this low-budget laugher, you'll be hard-pressed to discern any passion either in the movie or the production.

GRADE: D

* - Holy Crap is an occasional series about unique films, cutting a wide swath from brilliant to awful. Check out previous entries here and here and here.