Secret in Their Eyes

The sort of film that crops up at the tail end of awards sea­son, Secret in Their Eyes has the faint whiff of a well-inten­tioned, star-heavy endeav­our gone ter­ri­bly awry. A remake of the Oscar-win­ning Argen­tin­ian thriller of the same name from 2009, attempts are made to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the film enough to jus­ti­fy its exis­tence, but it can’t escape per­vad­ing silliness.

Chi­we­tel Ejio­for and Julia Roberts are inves­tiga­tive part­ners Ray and Jess, whose counter-ter­ror­ism stake out of an LA mosque in 2002 is inter­rupt­ed when a body found on the premis­es turns out to be Jess’ teenage daugh­ter. While Jess qui­et­ly implodes, Ray spends the pro­ceed­ing years obses­sive­ly try­ing to nab the killer. It’s here that both char­ac­ters inter­sect with glam­orous, by-the-book dis­trict attor­ney Claire, played by Nicole Kid­man in a ​‘sexy lawyer’ Hal­loween costume.

The three orbit each oth­er over the course of two time­lines set 13 years apart – one cul­mi­nat­ing in a key sus­pect walk­ing free, the oth­er ini­ti­at­ed in 2015 when Ray decides to pur­sue a new lead. Through fur­row-browed inten­si­ty and increas­ing­ly fright­ful wigs, the weight of unre­solved ques­tions lingers. For Ray and Claire, a sex­u­al attrac­tion left large­ly unspo­ken; for Jess, clo­sure elud­ing her dead daugh­ter due to var­i­ous acts of bureau­crat­ic nonsense.

Writer/​director Bil­ly Ray large­ly keeps his sto­ry small-scale, eschew­ing the gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion ele­ment of the orig­i­nal film and sub­sti­tut­ing it with an ini­tial­ly intrigu­ing but ulti­mate­ly direc­tion­less under­cur­rent of post‑9/​11 racial hys­te­ria. Mor­ph­ing the griev­ing rela­tion char­ac­ter from an anony­mous wid­ow­er into a tor­tured female fed is a bold move, but Ray’s direc­tion is oth­er­wise an unre­lent­ing slog. Events play out in a drab cycle of under­ground park­ing lots, ware­hous­es and dank legal offices, full of red tape and ludi­crous­ly sleazy cops, the gloom and doom only bro­ken up by moments of unin­ten­tion­al comedy.

It’s a pity because Ejio­for and Roberts are both very good. That ear­ly moment of gris­ly dis­cov­ery, Ejio­for real­is­ing the iden­ti­ty of their Jane Doe just as Roberts slips on her CSI gloves near­by, is manip­u­la­tive cheese on paper, but ren­dered bru­tal­ly authen­tic in the hands of two sea­soned pros. It’s the kind of act­ing deserv­ing of a bet­ter movie sur­round­ing it, rather than some­thing in which the key to catch­ing a killer is Nicole Kidman’s blouse for­tu­itous­ly pop­ping open.