Film review: 'Surveillance'

The film, shown last year at the Starz Denver Film Festival and playing exclusively at Chez Artiste starting July 17, takes us down another dark path, one bloodier and more visually unnerving than before.

But like “Funny Games” before it, “Surveillance” ultimately feels like a manipulation, an exercise in button pushing rather than an organic story that demands to be told.

The film opens with a grisly double murder, shot in bewildering cuts that don’t deny an ounce of the moment’s agony.

We jump ahead to the local police station, where the officers are bristling at the thought of a criminal intervention by the FBI. The two agents brought to the scene (Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond) are by-the-numbers efficient, but it doesn’t stop the local law from openly protesting their inclusion.

That tension, which sounds awfully familiar on the surface, is given a great deal of humor and pain by Lynch and co-screenwriter/star Kent Harper’s dialogue.

What follows is a “Rashomon” style mid-section recalling the officers’ run in with the outlaws from the previous day. One cop (French Stewart, the film’s best surprise) got killed in the melee. But no one can seem to tell the same story, even as video cameras capture every second of the investigation.

“Surveillance” delivers plenty of gallows humor, and every awkward laugh helps the disturbing series of events go down that much easier. Still, it’s hard to watch at times, and especially so when the Big Surprise takes over.

It’s nasty and unexpected, but it still doesn’t quite feel right. But little about the movie’s final moments will satisfy as intended.

Pullman and Ormond make a credible crime working team, but it’s the seedy locals who steal the show. Pell James deserves bonus points for making her strung-out character a human component.

“Surveillance” might make the cult movie circuit in years to come, but for now Lynch’s latest is alternately clever and confounding film experience.