Night Crawler
Added 10/5/2009
Extrapolated from an event in author Armistead Maupin's life, "The Night Listener" takes an exemplary cast and places it in a glacially paced suspense movie. Robin Williams stars as Gabriel Noone, a broadcasting doppelganger for bookwriter Maupin, who is given a horrific book by a 14 year old boy who claims he was sexually abused and exploited and is also an admirer of Noone's radio show. Noone and the boy, Peter, become phone and pen pals, but Noone's partner soon suspects that there is no Peter, and the social worker claiming to care for the boy is faking the story for attention.
Apparently that was where the real life situation with Maupin ended and the novel began. Noone is soon sucked into a deceitful web of promises, voices and broken appointments. He finally forces himself to fly from NYC to Wisconsin to learn the truth for himself. The movie gets a bonus star from Toni Collete, who plays the social worker with a creepy vulnerability, making the question of Peter's existence all the tougher to determine.
While all the actors are great in their roles (including Sandra Oh as Gabriel's book keeper), the movie drags. The wallpaper of a score does little to help, and Williams often looks like he's just dour when he's trying to play serious. The plotline that suggests the entire small town in Wisconsin is participating in Collete's hoax is left underdeveloped, with only one really scary scene with Williams and a backwoods cop. For what is billed as a 'suspense movie,' "The Night Listener" doesn't make the cut.
To see Robin Williams really get his spooky on, watch Insomnia or One Hour Photo.
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ROBBIN WILLIAMS PLAYING CHARACTERS WITH DIGNITY
Added 5/3/2009
A VERY NICE THRILLER. WILLIAMS AS ALWAYS, PLAYS HIS CHARACTERS WITH DIGNITY.THE PLOT KEEPS YOU INTERESTED. THE DVD WAS DELIVERED SAFE AND PROMPT.
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Not Great, but still entertaining
Added 3/22/2009
The movie really got going when the lead character starts his quest to find the boy, Peter. And the thrill is in the quest, and the twists and turns the movie takes along the way, plus the creepy character played by the female lead. All and all an worthy effort that keeps one watching to the not so surprising but nevertheless eerie ending. Good job!
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It was an interesting story that could have been better
Added 2/7/2009
I was really interested in watching The Night Listener because it looked like it would be a great thriller but it never really delivered. There wasn't enough of getting to know the characters to really develop any kind of emotional connection.
The film being based on a true story could have gone down much deeper, darker avenues to really hit home that all human beings are looking for love from each other in some way but some are so wounded and lonely that they will take those measures to the extreme to fulfill that emptiness. In this day and age of dating websites and social networking, it's easy to get caught up with believing in something that may be one-sided and projecting one's own feelings onto another person one has never met or even spoken to in real life.
Toni Collette gave a great performance. The desperation and creepiness she brought out in her character were believable. Robin Williams was okay; he seems to be drawn to playing psychologically needy or off-kilter psychos these days. I wish Rory Culkin would have been in the film more because his character could have been that bridge between the two main characters and their need to find some emotional truth in their lives. To conjure up a fictional boy dying of AIDS to get attention and love is a very desperate act by any human being, and that premise could've opened up many, many dark insights into the the theme this movie tried to communicate. Didn't care much for the use of the f-word so much....it cheapened the serious nature of the story in my opinion.
I think that the deleted scene in the bonus features should have been included. I didn't think it was "high melodrama" as the editor mentioned. I thought it shed some light on the whole creepiness of this imagined relationship.
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Not interested
Added 11/10/2008
I didn't like I though that it could be interesting, since I like his movies, but I did not like, the end is make non-sense
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