It could happen to you. Review on One Hour Photo Movie

One Hour Photo sees Robin Williams playing a lonely photo developer named Sy. Sy's life is so lonely that he escapes into a fantasy world where he's a member of one of the families that use his services. However his whole fantasy has been based around the happy photographs, and as such isn't a particularly realistic fantasy. As a result when Sy develops a photograph that shows the husband of this family cheating his fantasy begins to fall apart, and gradually so does he.

Director Mark Romanek has infused the film with a unique visual style that mimics the lives of the characters. The Yorkins home is a site to behold; a world of color to be seen by the eye, but the color is never completely vibrant, indicating to you that not all is right within this family unit. Yet it's when the film portrays Sy's life that the visuals really become interesting! Set within the confines of his place of work, Sy wears a uniform that combines White with an extremely Light blue and wonders around corridors bleached in a bright white light. This world that is so void of color helps you to empathize with the plight of Sy, who's world is so void of companionship that it becomes bland and repetitive. It enables you to see the frustration that Sy must feel in this bland routine, indicating, even in the early stages, that something is going to happen.

Combined with the dreamy visuals though is a soundtrack that subtly builds the suspense. It gets under your skin, not because it's a horror movie tune, but because it's bland and repetitive. Like the visuals it adds to the dreary atmosphere of Sy's life, helping you to empathize with the character even further so that his later actions feel all the more believable. I know, dreary visuals and a dreary soundtrack should make the film dreary. Yet One Hour Photo never is, it's incredibly suspenseful, and there's a very good reason for this.

What makes the film work as the most suspenseful movie since Hitchcock's heyday has to be the performance by Williams. He plays Sy just like any other lonely old man, making it perfectly believable that the family would trust him, but at the same time keeping the psychotic tendances bubbling away under the surface. His acting is very expressive, in the eyes, which give away the danger that you wouldn't otherwise notice. He's supported well by Connie Nielsen who plays Nina Yorken, the mother. She manages to avoid over playing the characters anxiety, but without making the character annoyingly dumb. Again watch her eyes and at times you will see the character give a nervous glance to what Sy says, but then shakes it off as harmless without losing her sense of unease. Very few actresses could pull of such subtle anxiety and so the combination of these 2 gives the film a subtle tension that built up to disturbingly believable levels.

Unfortunately as good as the film is, it remains imperfect thanks to some studio interference in the beginning and end of the film. It opens in a police station which explains Sy has done something horrible, but this then undermines the sense of unease that comes from not knowing if and when Sy will act. It very nearly degraded the film into a traditional psycho thriller. (Needles to say stop reading if you don't want a little ending info)Even worse than that was the ''Why Daddy Why?'' ending that was used. Again the horrible realism of the film came from the fact that Sy was lonely and that was why he acted the way he did.

By introducing a new childhood trauma they disable these feelings for the sake of giving an explanation that will please a more mainstream audience. Both of these problems are pretty serious and need mentioning, but thanks to the achievements of the rest of the film they don't cost it a star anywhere because overall One Hour Photo is such a tense and believable psycho thriller.