The Wisdom of Crocodiles
UK 1998
Reviewed by Liese Spencer
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
The body of a woman is found after a car crash. She is the ex-girlfriend of vampire Steven Grlscz. Later, Grlscz sees a woman, Maria Vaughan, about to throw herself under a train on the underground. He saves her and over the following weeks sets about seducing her. When he is convinced she has fallen in love with him, Grlscz takes her to bed and bites her neck, killing her. Grlscz drives to the sea and dumps her body.
When Maria's body is discovered, Grlscz goes to the police, pretending to help with their investigation. His helpfulness and lack of motive persuade Inspector Healey of his innocence, but hot-headed Sergeant Roche remains suspicious. As the police continue their enquiries, Grlscz meets structural engineer Anne Levels. They begin seeing each other, but Anne remains cautious about their relationship.
When Inspector Healey is mugged by a gang of thugs, Grlscz saves him and they strike up a friendship. Grlscz has an argument with Anne and doesn't see her for days. After phoning his apartment, Anne eventually visits Grlscz to find that he is sick. He tells Anne that he is a vampire and can only survive by drinking the blood of women who love him. He believes that if he can find the perfect love he will be cured. Anne nurses Grlscz, but as he gets weaker he tries to kill her. She escapes and Grlscz dies.
Review
As Channel 4's recent vampire series Ultraviolet proved, updating ancient horror myths is a tricky business. At its best the process lends a new resonance and ironic humour to old stories (think of Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark or John Landis' An American Werewolf in London). At its worst, modernisation can mean the suggestive power of metaphysical fantasy is replaced by bathos.
The Wisdom of Crocodiles falls into this second category. Nominally set in London, the film's bland locations make up an anonymous cityscape. If this is supposed to lend a universal 'timelessness' to events, then the designers fail immediately, by giving both Steven and Anne excruciatingly fashionable apartments (of the kind that only very rich or very unreal Londoners seem to possess). Moving between these over-dressed sets, minimalist restaurants and concrete car parks, the film lacks atmosphere and looks resolutely artificial.
Thanks to a lamentable script and flat direction from Po Chih Leong (hitherto Hong Kong based, but also director of the British-set Ping Pong), Jude Law's vampire remains equally implausible. Whether cataloguing his victims in a series of beautifully bound scrapbooks or placing phials of their crystallised emotions (yes, it's that literal) into what look like tiny cutlery trays, Steven just isn't sinister. Supernaturally polite and well spoken, Law's charming predator should be chilling, but fails to convince either as man or monster.
Which is a shame since Law, with his perfect features, has just the right Dorian Gray beauty to suggest inner corruption. Elina Löwensohn struggles equally hard to breathe life into her structural engineer, while Timothy Spall mugs from beneath a pair of beetling eyebrows as the plodding policeman turned father confessor. He even engages Steven in ponderous conversations about good and evil while wandering, with heavy symbolism, through a cemetery.
Entirely lacking in suspense, the film drags from one contrived scene to another, Paul Hoffman's script swinging between the pretentious ("the line that cuts through good and evil cuts through every human heart") and the downright banal. ("There's one problem about the way I am," Steven tells Anne. "It doesn't work.") And it's no surprise to find that the plot's clumsy contingencies (when Steven is made to go for a police line-up he's suddenly endowed with the power to mesmerise the witness) come crashing down at the movie's climax when Steven, after letting Anne nurse him for several days, suddenly jumps up and begins chasing her around his apartment. Hammer's cod-Victoriana may have been overenamoured with lace cuffs, capes and crucifixes, but at least their stories bothered to make sense and provided a few cheap thrills along the way. The Wisdom of Crocodiles is far too silly and self-important for either.
Credits
- Producers
- David Lascelles
- Carolyn Choa
- Screenplay
- Paul Hoffman
- Director of Photography
- Oliver Curtis
- Editor
- Robin Sales
- Production Designer
- Andy Harris
- Music
- John Lunn
- Orlando Gough
- ©Zenith Productions Limited
- Production Companies
- Goldwyn Films International/Film Foundry Partners/Entertainment Film Distributors/Zenith Productions in association with The Arts Council of England present a Zenith film
- Developed in association with Robert Jones
- Supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of England
- Developed with the support of the European Script Fund
- Executive Producers
- Scott Meek
- Dorothy Berwin
- Nigel Stafford-Clark
- Line Producer
- Laura Julian
- Production Executive
- Chris Catterall
- Production Co-ordinator
- Kora McNulty
- Unit Manager
- Claire Tovey
- Location Manager
- Jeremy Johns
- Assistant Directors
- Simon Hinkly
- Sarah Dibsdall
- Carlos Fidel
- Script Supervisor
- Sarah Garner
- Casting
- Director:
- Michelle Guish
- Consultant:
- David Rubin
- Additional Crew Directors of Photography
- Graham Frake
- Paul Wheeler
- Camera Operators
- Jeremy Gee
- Additional Crew:
- Graham Frake
- Paul Wheeler
- Steadicam Operators
- Alf Tramontin
- Simon Harding
- Digital Visual Effects
- The Film Factory at VTR
- Digital Effects Producer/Supervisor:
- Simon Giles
- Special Effects
- Supervisor:
- Stuart Brisdon
- Technicians:
- Ian Lowe
- Mike Tilley
- Mark Haddenham
- Art Director
- Ben Scott
- Original Paintings
- James Gemmill
- Diane Howse
- Scenic Artist
- James Gemmill
- Storyboard Artist
- John Greaves
Costume Designer- Anna Sheppard
- Make-up
- Chief Artist:
- Pat Hay
- Additional Crew:
- Anne Oldham
- Hairdresser
- Stephen Rose
- Title Design
- Chris Allies
- Optical Effects
- General Screen Enterprises
- Music Mixer
- Paul Golding
- Sound Recording
- Colin Nicolson
- Sound Mixer
- Additional Crew:
- Bill Dodkin
- Dubbing Mixers
- Aad Wirtz
- John Falcini
- Supervising Sound Editor
- John Downer
- Dialogue Editors
- Howard Eaves
- Jeremy Child
- Footsteps Editor
- Rodney Glenn
- Medical Advisers
- Carlton Jarvis
- Dennis Choa
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Nick Powell
- Cast
- Jude Law
- Steven Grlscz
- Elina Löwensohn
- Anne Levels
- Timothy Spall
- Inspector Healey
- Kerry Fox
- Maria Vaughan
- Jack Davenport
- Sergeant Roche
- Colin Salmon
- Martin
- Stuart Bowman
- C.J. December
- car crash mechanics
- Nick Lamont
- toll bridge attendant
- Joseph O'Conor
- Mr Nancarrow
- Hitler Wong
- Noodles Chan
- Anastasia Hille
- Karen
- Ashley Artus
- gang leader
- Tom Wu
- Hon Ping Tang
- Antony Cotton
- Richard Mylan
- Carlton Headley
- Neran Persaud
- gang members
- Julia Davies
- girl in operating theatre
- Rupert Farley
- priest
- Diane Howse
- Mrs Healey
- Cliff Parisi
- labourer
- Vincent Keane
- injured workman
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Entertainment Film Distributors Ltd
- 8,876 feet
- 98 minutes 37 seconds
- Dolby digital
- Colour by
- DeLuxe London