Anthony Hopkins plays the legendary director in 'Hitchcock': movie review
Alfred Hitchcock has been having rather a hard time of it lately. First there was the HBO movie 鈥淭he Girl,鈥� with Toby Jones playing the Master of Suspense as a blonde-obsessed boor. Now there鈥檚 鈥淗itchcock,鈥� with Anthony Hopkins playing the title role as a blobby crank. He鈥檚 still somewhat blonde-obsessed, but mostly he鈥檚 wound into knots about the filming of 鈥�Psycho鈥� and the possible dalliance of his wife and closest collaborator Alma Reville (Helen Mirren).
Hopkins has been fitted out prosthetically to resemble Hitchcock and he does a reasonably good job of impersonating him, but it鈥檚 a foredoomed effort. Mirren has the easier time of it; Reville was actually around five feet tall and looked nothing like this lanky, eternally sexy actress.
The film, directed by Sacha Gervasi from a script by John J. McLaughlin, cooks up standard-issue marital conflicts between Hitch and Alma, and we don鈥檛 get much insight into the director鈥檚 artistry either. Scarlett Johansson plays Janet Leigh, and she has the best line about the famously stubborn genius, telling a co-worker, 鈥渃ompared to Orson Welles, he鈥檚 a sweetheart.鈥� Grade: C (Rated PG-13 for some violent images, sexual content, and thematic material.)
