The Two Faces Of January

Synopsis: It’s Athens 1962 and glamorous New Yorkers Chester MacFarland (Viggo Mortensen) and his young wife, Colette (Kirsten Dunst) are sight-seeing when they meet tour guide Rydal (Oscar Isaac). They hire him to show them around but when one of Chester’s dodgy business deals ends in a fatal accident the three flee only to find the hand of fate on their shoulder

The Two Faces Of January is a classic style thriller almost straight out of the golden years of Hollywood. The only thing added is the colour, which helps immeasurably with the picturesque Greek and Cretan settings, nicely photographed by Marcel Zyskind. The only things missing are Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre lurking around the casbah.

Making his feature debut, writer-turned-director Hossein Amini clearly knows his thrillers, particularly from the 1940s and 50s. His film makes no concession to modern day multiplex examples of the genre with their set-piece stunts, spectacular SFX and high-level violence (which you might see an a film such as Drive which  Amini wrote.

Recalling Hollywood when craft was king, The Two Faces Of January is based on solid plotting, well-delineated characters and logically developed thematic content (the title is a reference to the two-faced Greek god Janus whose name provides the source of our January), much of which Amini has no doubt had the good sense to leave intact from Patricia Highsmith novel which was its origin.  His directing is efficient, the production design is spot-on (the re-creation of the Olympic Airways terminal in Athens is a real treat – you can’t help but expect Gregory Peck or Robert Mitchum to walk on camera) whilst Alberto Iglesias’s hard-working score adds much to the suspenseful atmosphere.

Whilst the three leads are all excellent in their individual characters if the film is a little wanting it is in the depiction of the relationship between them. Colette’s relationships with both Chester and Rydal are figured more than felt and it is really only the father-son transference between the older and younger man that really finds purchase. Thus we understand that Colette and Rydal are drawn to each other by their shared youth but this could have done with some more exposure whilst the raison d’être of Colette's relationship to her husband is pretty much taken for granted.

Still, The Two Faces Of January is a thriller rather high drama and there’s only so much that you can fit into a tidy 96 minute package and if you like those black and white noir classics from the 40s and 50s you won’t go wrong here.

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