Review: One Hour Photo

One Hour Photo is a very Chuck Palahniuk-like experience of the real world that shows the isolation and desolate feelings people reflect upon their lives which causes them to emotionally attach to that which they don’t have. One Hour Photo caps off Robin Williams’ triumphant return to film in the role of a villain in three movies this year, Insomnia, Death to Smoochy, and One Hour Photo. This movie was everything I was hoping it would be, and with the high expectations I had for it, I was very happy it turned out the way I wanted it to.

The story is simple enough to follow, but not until the very end do you get the scope. Sy Parrish is a photo-technician at a store very similar to Wal-Mart in more than one aspect. Since Sy lives alone and has no viable family he emotionally grasps on to a mother, husband and their son, whom he has been developing pictures for nine years. The intriguing part of the story is the fact that you feel very, very bad for Sy during the movie and his character is vividly brought to life by the brilliant Robin Williams. There are several times during the movie when you almost hate the family and want something bad to happen to them.

Throughout the course of the film you are given more insight into Sy’s obsession with these pictures (almost every one the family has undoubtfully taken) and you see how he envisions himself as “Uncle Sy” in his mind, even a very extensive day-dreaming scene gives further proof to this point. When Sy stumbles on to a set of pictures from another customer that implicates the husband as cheating on his wife, his vision of the perfect family is ruined and his picture shattered, which leads him to set out to correct things.

Again, you never see Sy as a bad guy throughout the entire film, he is more of a caring overseer who just wants things to be perfect, and back to the way they were.

Robin Williams is spectacular Parrish, and while the supporting cast is made up of primarily no name characters, they do an outstanding job of filling in the background and setting up scenes for Williams to light up the big screen.

The story itself is an excellent, dark story that is very reminding, in my mind, of Fight Club, if the movie were a bit darker it could be a Fincher film. This is good cinema, and Robin Williams needs to be nominated for an Oscar for his performance in one of his movies this year, because the man is back, and hopefully, back to stay.