Milla Jovovich gets a bad rap for a supermodel turned actress. When a director has a firm handle on her admittedly narrow range, she can convey a reasonable set of emotions at least as well as far less derided actresses (Scarlett Johannsson for instance). What she's not so good at is picking projects that have a firm grasp on what appropriate human responses are, making her come off as some kind of brain-dead automaton. To that pile, you can add Faces in the Crowd, a thriller with Memento aspirations, but held back by a somewhat dim understanding of what makes for compelling suspense.
Anna Marchant's (Jovovich) life reads like a pitch for a Sex and the City spin-off: a luxurious apartment with boyfriend Bryce (Michael Shanks), a cushy teaching job that she evidently loves, and two best friends with whom she can constantly dish and go out for cocktails. This is all up-ended during an encounter with Tearjerk Jack, a notorious serial killer who has been killing and raping women in Manhattan near her home. She stumbles across him in the park while he's in the act, but escapes by falling into the river, injuring herself in the process. She is left with the incredibly stupid-sounding but medically accurate condition of face blindness, where she is unable to recognize anyone else's face, including the killer's. The unenviable task of getting her to be able to recognize Tearjerk falls to detective Kerrest (Julian McMahon) and doctor Langenkamp (Marianne Faithfull), who hope that she'll be able to recognize him before he strikes again.
Faces in the Crowd finds more ways to visualize Anna's condition that you might initially suspect, but the world she occupies never looks or feels especially menacing, with few shadows long or deep enough to hold anything really scary (the ridiculous name Tearjerk Jack doesn't help either). As much time as Anna spends trying to get a handle on her illness, she seems to be spending as much time figuring out how this is going to affect her relationship. Under normal circumstances, this might help to establish character, but here, it seems like a calculated move to keep Jovovich in line to fill Sarah Jessica Parker's shoes should the right project come along. Surprisingly, she acquits herself rather well, her spacey gaze lending itself well to someone whose reality is uncertain, if it even exists at all. But Faces in the Crowd never finds a steady place between agony and mystery, or visualizes it in a way that is at all compelling.
"Faces in the Crowd" is on sale October 25, 2011 and is rated R. Thriller. Written and directed by Julian Magnat. Starring Julian McMahon, Milla Jovovich, Marianne Faithfull.
