When Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner) discovers that her sister Celine
(Elsa Pataky) is missing, she immediately goes to the police, who brush off her
concerns ("maybe she met a guy"). When she persists, the officer at the front
desk tells her to follow the pizza delivery guy to an office downstairs. This
turns out to be the lair of Inspector Enzo Avolfi (played with 1940s film noir
cheesiness by Adrian Brody, who at times act like he's in a completely different
movie). The good inspector broods in his subterranean hideaway, looking over
grisly crime scene photos of women in various forms of dismemberment, because
he’s something of an expert in serial killers.
He thinks that Celine, a top fashion model, has been abducted by a serial killer
who drives a taxi cab--what better and more insidious way to pick up solitary
young female victims than with a harmless looking cab? An unlikely partnership
is formed when Celine joins Avolfi as they hunt down the killer before he can
ravage Celine on his operating table ‘o’ doom. Add director Dairo Argento, mix
with a major Hollywood star, and blend with a dash of Saw and you have this
jumbled mess of a film, which treats the viewer like an idiot by ignoring some
basic common sense.
For one thing, the fact that Linda becomes Avolfi’s de facto partner as he
investigates Celina’s disappearance is just too silly to even contemplate. No
way would a civilian be given the sort of access to a case that Linda has; the
fact that she’s the sister of the victim is all the more good reason to keep her
at arm’s length. And when a well-known fashion model goes missing, the police
would usually take more interest than the dismissive attitude that the front
desk guy has. And one thing that really bugs me is when a victim is bound with
her hands in front of her--yet this somehow makes her too helpless to even pull
the gag from her mouth.
But all of these story quibbles would ordinarily be glossed over by Argento’s
usual dynamic visual style--however, Argento himself seems pretty muted here.
Perhaps that might be because Giallo is one of the rare films that he directed
in which he didn’t have a hand in the writing. But clearly the worst thing about
Giallo is Adrian Brody, who’s badly miscast in both roles as the Inspector and
the serial killer (he plays the killer under heavy makeup, and uses a pseudonym).
He's neither very likeable as the hero, nor very menacing as the villain.
Giallo here refers to the killer’s jaundiced complexion--which is just as well,
because it bears no resemblance to the Italian genre of mystery fiction, one
which Argento himself popularized back in his heyday.
--SF
