One Hour Photo (2002)
Grade: A-
Cast: Robin Williams, Connie Nielson, Michael Vartan, Dylan Smith, Gary Cole
Director: Mark Romanek
Rated R for sexual content and some language.

He stands too close to you as he continues the bizarre conversation he has so awkwardly started. He looks over at you too often to see your reaction, and you smile weakly to please his needs, because he’s far too harmless for you to offend by revealing your aggravation. On the inside, you’re wishing he would shut up and go away. He makes forced but sincere compliments to you, or someone or something you love, and you graciously thank him. The thanks is followed by an excuse as to why you have to end the visit and leave (whether it is a real or fake excuse is of no consequence to you, as long as you’re out of there). You begin walking away happily. You cannot tell if the person you are talking to knows of your relief or not.

People like this are disturbingly frequent in the real world, and everyone that spends time outside their own home knows these kinds of people and is familiar with these kinds of scenarios (although one wonders if the people I’m referring to have ever been on the other side of the situation). I often find myself wondering what goes on in the head of this kind of person (and I apologize for making it sound as if they’re a different kind of species or something), and Mark Romanek’s “One Hour Photo”, an excellent new psychological drama, is game to tackle the question.

2002 seems to be the year in which Robin Williams is trying to redefine his onscreen persona, and “One Hour Photo” is the third dark role he has taken this year, after the creepy killer in “Insomnia” and the homicidal kiddie-show host in “Death To Smoochy”. In “One Hour Photo”, he plays The Man Who Tries Too Hard.

Or, to be more specific, Sy the Photo Guy. He works at the Sav-Mart photo lab and his falsely smiling, bored but polite victims are the Yorkin family—Nina (Connie Nielson, “Gladiator”, very good here), Will (Michael Vartan, “Alias”), and son Jake (Dylan Smith). Sy is not as harmless as the typical Man Who Tries Too Hard, though—he is obsessed with the Yorkin family, and when one of the Yorkins betrays the rest of their family, Sy thinks he ought to make them pay. How does Sy know? Well, he has a wall of Yorkin pictures at his own impersonal home, so whatever is photographed by the Yorkins soon becomes common knowledge to Sy. Since he has no life himself, he assumes the best he can do is try to become Uncle Sy to the Yorkin family.

In fact, one of the most intriguing scenes is when Sy imagines waltzing into the Yorkin home, lecturing an absent Jake, taking a crap, and watching a football game on TV. As the scene plays, we don’t know it’s a fantasy, and there is suspense when the Yorkin family comes back home—only for them to react with pleased surprise at the sight of Sy.

The only place where “One Hour Photo” steps wrong is in its finale. The way Sy reacts to a certain sin of a certain Yorkin is unbelievable and contradictory when compared to Sy’s character for the rest of the film’s running time. Thankfully, “One Hour Photo” is smart enough to end on a haunting note, and it sort of erases our initial disappointment. Still, “One Hour Photo” could have been a classic if it hadn’t made that little screw-up towards the end. I will no doubt see the film again, and I can only hope Sy’s ultimate motivations make more sense next time around and that the ending grows on me. As for right now, though, it is the factor that ruins what could have almost been perfection.

In this career reinvention I speak of, Robin Williams is asking for a specific reaction, and he’s getting it from me: wow. In this role, he is about as good as I’ve ever seen him. He probably knows just as many Men Who Try To Hard as the rest of us, and he inhabits the lonely persona of Sy to perfection. He’s socially uneasy, and in both his body language and delivery of dialogue Williams shows great understanding of the nature of Sy’s character. He also has a mostly fabulous voice-over that mainly talks about his devotion to his job. Most of us don’t care all that much about the guy who develops our photos, and the fact that Sy takes it so deadly seriously is a not-so-subtle hint at just how lonely and aimless he is. Through all this, Williams never hits a false note. He truly believes he could be a Yorkin, and that developing photos at Sav-Mart is an art. Williams mostly underplays it, but on the occasions where he has to break down or show true emotion, he’s just as good (one of his best scenes is the very last one). He’s a smarter actor than most people give him credit for, and his great performances in “Insomnia” and “One Hour Photo” prove it. Hopefully he stays on the track he’s on right now.

“One Hour Photo” is first and foremost a character study—not a horror movie, not a thriller, not an action film. Since it is a character study, our interest must be held by Sy, and Williams makes Sy his own. The creation is an excellent one. The performance and character I keep getting reminded of is Robert DeNiro’s Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver”. The films themselves are quite different, and the characters are too, come to think of it. But they both have a similar list of characteristics to them, and a person that keeps them from becoming a human void without any real purpose. For Bickle, it was Iris (Jodie Foster), the young prostitute he wanted to save. For Sy, it’s the Yorkins. He thinks if he saves them from falling apart that maybe he can become an unofficial part of the family himself. “Taxi Driver” is one of the best films a person could wish for, and “One Hour Photo” is more flawed, but it has the same studied portrayal of pure loneliness. In short, it couldn’t be more fascinating. Mark Romanek has written a focused and smart script, and has directed a disturbingly atmospheric and sad film about what life is like to the souls in the world without any real reason for being. A picture is worth a thousand words; “One Hour Photo” is worth more. I just gave you 1,113 of them. If I haven’t convinced you to go see it by now, you may not deserve to see it.


-Alex, August 2002