Secret in Their Eyes movie review (2015)

More damaging are the casting choices. Let’s start with the A-listers onscreen, beginning with Julia Roberts. There is nothing inherently wrong with changing the gender of the character that is related to the young female victim. Except that the connection involved—mother-and-daughter—no longer provides the same sort of echo of the unrequited love angle. That the parent is an FBI investigator initially directly involved in the case makes matters too personal for her and her co-workers. As one character rightly notes, “We’re not just crossing the line, we’re burying it.” They also are disposing with believability as a result.

“Secret in Their Eyes” also requires Roberts, who is kept at bay through much of the movie save for several  showy outbursts and the twist ending, to turn down her star wattage considerably even before she is grief-stricken. Anyone who recalls Roberts in “Mary Reilly” as Dr. Jekyll’s plain-Jane servant knows how well her fans take to a cinematic frump-over of their idol.

Meanwhile, Nicole Kidman as Roberts’ district attorney boss has a few strong scenes, including one with intensely sexual overtones, as she strives to make finding the killer a priority despite the fact that the prime suspect is a source of intel on a terrorist cell linked to a local mosque. But she also has to be incandescent enough to cause Roberts’ fellow FBI investigator, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, to gaze upon her like a googly-eyed schoolboy any time she slinks across his path. Too often Kidman, decked out in designer outfits as opposed to Roberts’ grunge garb, looks like she is floating through a perfume commercial. 

As for Ejiofor, who mesmerized in “12 Years a Slave,” he is not the problem even if he has more chemistry with character actor Dean Norris as sidekick Bumpy than he does with either female cohort. Also fulfilling their duties well are Michael Kelly, who knows his way around white-collar weasels lately thanks to his memorable work as Doug Stamper on Netflix’s “House of Cards,” and Alfred Molina as Kidman’s blustery higher-up.

But although a surprising number of plot machinations from the original film remain fully intact, usually accounting for anything that seems remotely clever, what is missing is the type of hold-your-breath tension provided by good thrillers. Neither the camerawork nor the editing between 2002 and the current timeline manages to stir up much excitement. Billy Ray, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter for his “Captain Phillips” script, deftly directed the journalism-scandal biopic “Shattered Glass.” But he falls flat here.

It may be unfair to compare the Argentine version with this inferior one, since most people probably haven’t seen the first. But even when taken on its own terms, “Secret in Their Eyes” amounts to a disappointment. The real secret here: Reading subtitles is better than sitting through a weak imitation.

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