What Happened to Backbone?
Stylistic excesses could be overlooked, though, if the film’s backbone was rock-solid. Unfortunately, not only are the script’s gears in plain sight, they’re giving off smoke. “Undoing” sets out with a reliable way to create suspense. It begins with a cliffhanger, then flashes back until events catch up to resolve the loose ends. The trouble is, Lee not only resolves it very early on, it’s not a particularly suspenseful cliffhanger to begin with. As if aware that this writing tactic fizzled, Lee goes on to contrive a threat in the form of Russell Wong, a hit man of sorts, who tries to run Sammy out of town. But the set-up is unconvincing, the suspense (or even menace) is non-existent, and poor Wong is left with nothing to do but impressions of Christopher Walken. Put this together with elliptical, unrevealing dialogue and blatantly implausible scenarios — Sammy returns one year later to find a corpse and car exactly where he left them — and we have a story that just can’t stay together.
An Errant Conclusion
Though the press kit claims it “suggests the uniquely American genre of film noir,” the film ends up, at best, a photocopied facsimile of a simulation of film noir. The lack of mystery, existential malaise, hard-boiled tones, and even a femme fatale, becomes particularly obvious when compared to the most recent noir film, Rian Johnson’s outstanding feature debut “Brick.” This isn’t to say that Chris Chan Lee is untalented or unskilled, but to suggest that “Undoing” doesn’t do justice to his potential.
Entertainment Value: no stars (out of two)
Technical Quality: no stars (out of two)