One Hour Photo

An eminently forgettable film, this story is almost, but not quite the antithesis of its advertised content. The clips for the trailer are clearly arranged to create anticipation for a violent stalker. I can imagine the advertising team leader sitting at a conference table saying, Alright, what can we do to get an audience? Remember, violence sells!

However Robin Williams does a superb job of creating the reclusive, sad, lonely and somewhat obsessed Sy the photo guy during the first half of the tale. If there is any excellence in this film, it is this character study. Williams in his tidy clerks uniform, seems to match the shelf items in the huge SavMart variety store thats so aseptically bright, white and clean you could safely dissect biological specimens in the aisles. But, his conversion into a mission impossible like operative in the second half was over the edge for me, primarily because it seemed beyond the scope of the character.

There is a transitional point at which Sy is watching the sci-fi classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). We see the final scene where Klaatu delivers that wonderful speech to the people of earth, its peace or annihilation. The choice is yours. Presumably, Klaatu zips back to his own planet and Sy decides to mimic Klaatu fifty years later in his own small piece of earth. Well maybe.

What seems to be missing is what Lajos Egri would call, the dramatic motivation. Sy is an isolated human being and peculiar, but so are a lot of us. He is also capable, articulate, a perfectionist and caring. The situation that confronts him is disturbing, but unless hes been on Klaatus planet all this time, he must have seen the same thing a million times in magazines and books or on radio and television. I did not feel an irresistible motivation for the characters actions.

Robin Williams plays Sy, a photography development technician. Williams first came on our radar screen as Mork in Mork & Mindy, the 1978 TV series. He would ad lib so many lines that they stopped writing them for him. Although he began as a stand-up comedian, he has been doing more serious acting roles, like this one. In his fifties now, he lives with his family in the Seacliff district of San Francisco. Williams who interrupts with non-stop ad lib jokes was a challenge for PBS interviewer Charlie Rose (its on the DVD).

Reviewed October 3, 2003