Vertigo Review

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Vertigo is a pretty big movie from the late 50’s. I’m sure that most of us know what the term Vertigo means, so I’ll skip that part. Alfred Hitchcock tends to make a lot of mystery movies and this one is no exception. The actual mystery doesn’t start until the later part of the film, unless you debate whether there’s a….Ghost involved! Let’s see how epic this film turned out.

Joh-Scottie is the main character of the film and he’s pretty terrible, but more on that later. He’s a retired detective who had to stop being a policeman when he led someone to their doom. It was an accident and the guy practically lunged off of the roof, but Sco-John knew that he needed to retire. Now he lives the happy life, no stress, no pressure! Unfortunately, someone wants him to complete one last assignment. (Sound like James Bond or Batman yet?) Jo-Scottie accepts and his mission is to follow the man’s wife: Madeleine. He fears that she is being possessed by a ghost. Sc-John follows her to a lot of placed and eventually she jumps in a river. Her body is able to float amidst the water so at least there is no chance of drowning, but John- I mean Scottie! Decides to save her. She escapes yet again and John is back to square one. Is she being possessed? Is she just insane!?

The film had a very weak cast, but films tend to do that. The best character was easily the judge when they took the main character to court. This guy knew what he was talking about and he saw through the main character’s act with ease! This guy was definitely an intellectual and not someone who should be messed with. John/Scottie suffers from delusions and he basically cracks towards the second half of the film. I would have felt bad for him, had he not been such an awful protagonist. You can’t even call him a hero since his short sighted, immoralistic (Is that a word? Well, now it is!) actions quickly turn him into the antagonist. Towards the end, you aren’t even sure who you should root for anymore! (I decided to just watch the two villains duke it out with an expression of horror on my face!) It’s really too bad, since the main character was pretty good at the beginning. He stayed solid until he took on the mission, which is where he slowly (But steadily) went downhill. The other characters were pretty unmemorable, but Judy Barton made some pretty big mistakes. Sometimes you shouldn’t wear things from the crime scene….

Overall this movie wasn’t one of Hitchcock’s better films. I do applaud the fake out endings, (Did you think that Avengers had a lot of those? This one has around 5 different scenes where the film “ends” and then starts up again. It was pretty epic, but one of the fake endings beat the real one. Only one of them though, I did enjoy the real ending since it was a pretty epic twist) but it wasn’t enough to keep the film afloat. It was just too long and suffered from the main characters. I recommend the film if you want to see a film where the main characters gets to leap across buildings, but otherwise, check out Man of Steel. He may not jump over them, but flying’s pretty good as well!

Overall 3/10

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