It’s unlikely any former James Bond actor will ever match the breadth and depth of interesting non-007 roles played by Sean Connery (“The Man Who Would Be King,” “The Hunt for Red October,” “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” “The Rock,” “Rising Sun,” “Robin and Marian,” “The Anderson Tapes,” “Murder on the Orient Express,” and many others), but Pierce Brosnan is a clear second (“The Thomas Crown Affair” remake, “The Matador,” “Mama Mia!,” “Remember Me,” “The November Man,” and others). And Brosnan continues to extend his position over Daniel Craig, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and George Lazenby with another solid noteworthy performance in “Spinning Man,” debuting on Blu-ray June 26 (Lionsgate, $21.99).
Brosnan plays detective Malloy, who is investigating the disappearance and presumed murder of a young college student of a professor who had to leave his last job due to his involvement with another young female student. Professor Evan Birch (Guy Pearce) is really very quickly the only likely suspect, but we as viewers are led to believe that Birch doesn’t even really know if he did anything wrong in this case or not. Pearce does a good job of playing that uncertainty convincingly. But it doesn’t help that he allows another current student to flirt with him and meet him outside of class even though she makes it clear from the beginning that they already had a physical encounter the previous semester, which they both seem to pretend they felt was a mistake.
Director Simon Kaijser adds to the mystery with many cutaways to what may be either hallucinations or flashbacks by Birch.
The resolution has a couple of twists and an outcome that will likely surprise you even if it’s not totally satisfying.
In addition to a couple insignificant deleted scenes, the bonus features include a short featurette on the making of the movie with interviews of Pearce, who jokingly notes that there were “a lot of Pierces” involved – Guy Pearce, Pierce Brosnan, and the filming location of Pierce College.
Brosnan and Driver comment about the pleasure of working together again as they did more than 20 years ago in Brosnan’s first 007 outing “Goldeneye,” although most viewers will be hard-pressed to remember Driver in that film for only a few seconds as a singer in a Russian bar mangling American country pop songs.
Kaijser provides a mildly interesting audio commentary, noting where the script “could have used another round,” opining that he’d like to see more of Brosnan’s character (in future films?), and pointing out locations such as downtown Whittier, California, which was chosen because of its art deco theater.
— By Scott Hettrick