It's always a good feeling to be combing through the DVDs at such a barren wasteland of product like Blockbuster and suddenly come across something that looks like of interesting: Hugo Weaving, of the Matrix and V for Vendetta, in a film with a title that immediately rings of Kafka (duh) and the premise sounding like a riff on something one might find in the Usual Suspects, only without the huge cast of characters. Watching it, it's something like finding a little hidden treasure in the mystery movie genre. It's not perfect, but it's got dynamite acting and a sense of suspense that makes one guess and second guess and guess again on the status of this guy Edward Fleming, and by proxy the stone-cold cop interrogating him.
It starts off like classic Kafka, updated for modern times, but the opening scenes are where the Trial comparison ends... mostly. Fleming is told he's being accused of car theft, which he flat-out denies. After being badgered for a spell to confess he finally asks for a lawyer, who tells him that he really doesn't have that much to worry about. From then on it becomes a kind of weird guessing game on the end of the detectives - did he really commit these *other* crimes he's suddenly admitting to, or is it all just an act? What kind of hell will freeze over if he's just putting on the brash results-oriented detective John Steele?
Part of the joy of the piece, very much like a chamber drama or something Sidney Lumet might have made back in the 1970's, is seeing the actors at work. Primarily it's the Hugo Weaving show, as he shows that he's much more than the stone-faced-ham of The Matrix, as he's sympathetic, confused, devious, almost charming, and finally really perplexing. But another part of what makes the Interview so fascinating is that the director, first-timer Craig Monahan, lets us as the audience decide for ourselves really.
While the last shot of the film may reveal a little too much and lessen the ambiguity that's built up (but oh, what a great final shot it is), we get to really participate in this mystery - or is it even a mystery at all and are the detectives being duped by a guy who has it in for them? How you feel about harsh interrogation techniques (though not outright torture in this case save for lack of food), or about the nature of this guy Fleming, depends on how you really view it.
And yet if you'd rather not take part in the intellectual mind-game of the proceeding, it's still got crackerjack dialog and a very good supporting performance by Tony Martin as John Steele. It's also got the good graces of not treating its audience like a bunch of cliché-hungry morons: neither of the two protagonists is entirely good or bad in the traditional sense, and right or wrong is blurred throughout. I was hooked from start to finish.
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