- guardian.co.uk,
- Monday January 28 2008 12:16 GMT
You can't beat Hitchcock (let's face it, the best Hitchcock remake is The Man Who Knew Too Much, remade by ... Hitchcock), but for the most part, this different take on Rear Window crossed in this instance with a hint of rom-com and a smattering of rites of passage drama, is enjoyable. Actually and naughtily, there doesn't seem to be any credit for the director, or Cornel Woolrich, who wrote the story he loosely adapted (in which the Grace Kelly character was the protagonist's male servant). This stars Shia LaBoeuf, probably the most famous actor that no one here had heard of a year ago, as a likable, believable lead. The one big change from Rear Window is that there's no plaster cast, and no broken leg. It's a court-adminstered ankle tag that prevents our young hero from venturing even to the end of the garden. If he goes further, the police will be there in a flash. The other change is that while binoculars are still used for this bored snoop to check on his neighbours, they're now backed up with all manner of vidcam/laptop surveillance techniques, another audience demographic switch from the old days (James Stewart was 47 in the brilliant original; LaBoeuf is 21 and his mother here is Matrix star Carrie-Anne Moss).
While LaBoeuf is doing what he calls "the Martha Stewart thing" after punching his Spanish teacher, he discovers - as you might anticipate - a dodgy neighbour who might be a murderer, and since it's creepy David Morse - the all-purpose Stephen King nightmare baddie - he probably is. Like many a thriller, Disturbia spends most of its running time arranging a believable setting, in this case a lush, Desperate Housewives-style piece of suburbia, and then ruins it in the latter stages, by bunging in all the old slasher/horror cliches, complete with our old friend, the thunderstorm that just happens to coincide with the climax. Does no one ever say to a director - in this case DJ Caruso (not to be confused with the unrelated crap actor David) - "Er, DJ, isn't that a touch overused?" Caruso did the quite fun Al Pacino pic Two for the Money and is nearly good again here. If only old Hollywood had a thunderstorm-machine strike, instead of a writers' version.
