The irony of the movie "One Hour Photo" is that it's yet another decent performance of Robin Williams went unnoticed, which is exactly the issue the movie tried to address, the facelss in the crowd. Believe or not, with his high-octane performing style, and wide scope of roles, Robin Williams is never a truly versatile actor. His best roles over the years, Sean of "Good Will Hunting", Keating of "Dead Poets Society" (the ever-endearing, haunting DPS), the DJ in "Good morning Vientnam", Mel of "Deconstructing Harry", the killer in "Insomnia", just to name a few, fall in, more or less, the same category: The unimpressive, insignificant Joe with a heart of gold, Mr. Cellophone, the beautiful loser.
Sy the photo guy is then the sum of all the losers he intepreted so far. Even though his regular customers can call him by the name, he's nothing more than just a two-letter symbol to them, an extention to the developing machine he spent 13 years to "personally calibreate, the best in the state". Williams is "the master of his domain" when it comes to the intepretation of this kind of guy, meek, mellow and non self-affirmative. The best performance of his in the movie, in my opinion, is the two and a half seconds of facial expression of Sy the moment he heard the news of being fired. The devastation is very convincing, makes u realize after 13 years of living in oblivion this seemingly worthless job is all that Sy hanged his existence onto, and how the blow of the cruelity of life can be delivered in full fledge with such a trivial mishap. The tricky part is Sy is walking on the borderline of being a likeable Everyman and creepy psycopath and Williams kept it in perfect balance throughout the movie. Even when Sy snapped after being fire and crossed the line from being a shy stalker to a downright life-threating criminal, he still kept his moderation and cowardness and, for better or worse, at the final moment the decency of humanity flashed back in his tormented mind and the movie ended in mediocracy.
Being a thriller, the cinemagraphy and music score did a decent job delievering a well-controlled, introvert kind of creepy feeling. The unrealistic tidiness of the supermarket constantly rub the viewers' mind with uneasiness, and the music helps to build up the suspense which is otherwisely inadequately done. The ending, being smart and decent, feels unsatisfying nonetheless. With a conventional script and predictable plot, there's nothing to watch for this movie other than the performance of WIlliams.
( I very much like to talk about "the facelss in crowd" issue but it's too huge a topic, so here it is, this half-assed piece of a decent but mediocre movie. )
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