In "F/X" Brian Dennehy played a cop with a knack for staying on top of criminals as if he were psychic. His body--stocky, barrel-chested, rock-like--looked like it was made to right injustices. He had the profile of an eagle and the broad face of a bulldog, and he squints with vehement incredulity at anything outside the law. He was impressive.
In a turnabout as serial killer John Wayne Gacy in what could have been the performance of a lifetime, Dennehy uses his probing intelligence and menacing presence at the service of death and perversity. He's the deceiver, seeking sexual pleasure in unlawful ways, while somewhat successfully maintaining a front of decency and respectability. In "To Catch A Killer," he carries himself with the authority that is the mark of the moralist, and we are allowed fleetingly to see how far the reality misses the mark.
If Dennehy falls short here, the fault is with the intent of the movie's makers. They see their work as a kind of primer for law enforcement officials on solving serial homicide. Problem is the movie's reason for being undercuts the reason the movie exists at all, namely, its subject's dark side. Dennehy compromises himself as an actor by using his steely stare to suggest murderous intent and then expecting us to accept externals to convey that he is playing a psychopath. Good psychodrama this does not make, and "To Catch A Killer" remains an only occasionally effective re-creation of already-known facts.
Casting Dennehy is a mistake anyway. What it misses is how innocuous Gacy could look, how harmless he seemed. Could anyone be fooled into believing going home with a leering Dennehy could be safe? Even clown make-up cannot cover this man's ferociousness. And the lure of easy money would give the most money-starved of us pause, I suspect, if it meant getting into a car with Dennehy at the wheel.
Besides, even if someone blind to this risked it, isn't the movie's primary interest in answering the question why men run scared from the idea of death at the hands of a bisexual pederast but embrace the possibility of death under other degrading circumstances? Don't we need to see what we are being asked to hate? The one opportunity we have to do just that is curtailed by police surveillance. It may be in good taste or out of respect for the dead that the filmmakers shy away from what should be the central theme of the movie, but the result is not more understanding but less. Not even incidental questions that come to mind (like why did Gacy keep articles of clothing and other possessions of his victims which any thinking person would recognize as incriminating or why he made his victims suffer when sadists on the whole seem drawn less to inflicting pain than in dominating their subjects) do they bother to address.
Michael Riley plays police chief Joe Kozenczak with honorable restraint, and Martin Julien as Gacy's work supervisor Theo sweats convincingly. Beads of sweat aside, the movie adds up to the mere sum of its parts. Nabbing someone who doesn't have enough sense not to turn his crawlspace into a private gravesite and keep mementos of his conquests for convenient pick-up as forensic evidence, while a psychic (Margot Kidder is not a good choice for this.) is called upon to "psyche out" his weak-willed cohort hardly seems a challenge. It would seem police training is not so much what is needed. More likely, something on the order of providence or dumb luck or both.
In a turnabout as serial killer John Wayne Gacy in what could have been the performance of a lifetime, Dennehy uses his probing intelligence and menacing presence at the service of death and perversity. He's the deceiver, seeking sexual pleasure in unlawful ways, while somewhat successfully maintaining a front of decency and respectability. In "To Catch A Killer," he carries himself with the authority that is the mark of the moralist, and we are allowed fleetingly to see how far the reality misses the mark.
If Dennehy falls short here, the fault is with the intent of the movie's makers. They see their work as a kind of primer for law enforcement officials on solving serial homicide. Problem is the movie's reason for being undercuts the reason the movie exists at all, namely, its subject's dark side. Dennehy compromises himself as an actor by using his steely stare to suggest murderous intent and then expecting us to accept externals to convey that he is playing a psychopath. Good psychodrama this does not make, and "To Catch A Killer" remains an only occasionally effective re-creation of already-known facts.
Casting Dennehy is a mistake anyway. What it misses is how innocuous Gacy could look, how harmless he seemed. Could anyone be fooled into believing going home with a leering Dennehy could be safe? Even clown make-up cannot cover this man's ferociousness. And the lure of easy money would give the most money-starved of us pause, I suspect, if it meant getting into a car with Dennehy at the wheel.
Besides, even if someone blind to this risked it, isn't the movie's primary interest in answering the question why men run scared from the idea of death at the hands of a bisexual pederast but embrace the possibility of death under other degrading circumstances? Don't we need to see what we are being asked to hate? The one opportunity we have to do just that is curtailed by police surveillance. It may be in good taste or out of respect for the dead that the filmmakers shy away from what should be the central theme of the movie, but the result is not more understanding but less. Not even incidental questions that come to mind (like why did Gacy keep articles of clothing and other possessions of his victims which any thinking person would recognize as incriminating or why he made his victims suffer when sadists on the whole seem drawn less to inflicting pain than in dominating their subjects) do they bother to address.
Michael Riley plays police chief Joe Kozenczak with honorable restraint, and Martin Julien as Gacy's work supervisor Theo sweats convincingly. Beads of sweat aside, the movie adds up to the mere sum of its parts. Nabbing someone who doesn't have enough sense not to turn his crawlspace into a private gravesite and keep mementos of his conquests for convenient pick-up as forensic evidence, while a psychic (Margot Kidder is not a good choice for this.) is called upon to "psyche out" his weak-willed cohort hardly seems a challenge. It would seem police training is not so much what is needed. More likely, something on the order of providence or dumb luck or both.