Immortality (AKA The Wisdom Of A Crocodile) (1998)

 Immortality (AKA The Wisdom Of Crocodiles) (1998)

So when I write these reviews, after I watch the film, I spend time researching the film, before writing the article, some films are hard to find much information about them.   This next film should be relatively easy to find information about with a cast that include Jude Law and Timothy Spall, however this film seems to be a little obscure for some reason.  The film I am reviewing is Immortality or as it is known in most countries outside of the US it is known as The Wisdom Of Crocodiles.  This is a british film, released in 1998 in the UK, and 2000 in the US.  Some sources erroneously claim that the film is based on the book of the same name by Paul Hoffman, but the truth is that Hoffman's novel The Wisdom Of Crocodiles was published in 2000 and was based on his own screenplay of this film, it would also be his first novel that he would publish.   The film is about a vampire, who needs to feed off not only the blood but the emotions of women.  The film is beautiful, and sometimes quite sexy, but it also feels like it goes on and on forever, with a slow pace and long scenes of dialogue the film feels more of a bore than anything else to me.  This film honestly feels like little more than an attempt to cash in on the popularity and sexiness of vampires, but fails to be interesting enough to actually work as an effective vampire film.

The Wisdom Of Crocodiles was directed by Po-Chih Leong, with a screenplay by Paul Hoffman.  The was distributed by Entertainment Film Distributors and released in 1998, though the US distribution rights were purchased by Miramax who distributed the films to theaters in 2000, and homevideo in 2001.   The film was a moderate international success, and won a few awards, though in the US for the most part it is a bit of an unknown film for the most part.   The film has potential, but to me it just really comes off as a slow paced form that is attempting to be pretentious and artsy, and just falls drastically short of the mark.  

The Wisdom Of Crocodiles stars Jude Law as Steven Grlscz, Kerry Fox as Maria Vaughan (a woman that Grlscz dates and then kills), Elina Lowensohn as Anne Levels (the primary love interest of the film).  Meanwhile Grlscz is being investigated for the murder of Maria by Inspector Healy (Timothy Spall) and Sergeant Roche (Jack Davenport).   The actors aren't bad, matter of fact the film has a great and talented cast, but if a script is boring, it doesn't matter how talented the cast is, they can't fix unbearably slow pacing, and a boring screenplay. I have heard this was turned into a book, but honestly if the film is this slow and boring, I don't know why anyone would want to read it.

I didn't hate this film, it had potential to be a decent film, I just feel like it suffers from a director that is trying to be artsy and pretentious, but forgot to make a film that is actually interesting and worth watching.   The actors are decent, and the film has a sexy look to it, and there is some beautiful art throughout.  Even the plot has potential to be better than it is, but with long boring scenes of dialogue, and a feeling of almost always quietly going nowhere, the 99 minute runtime ends up feeling like six hours.   The characters are unrelatable and pointless.   So if you are a fan of this film, I'm sorry to bash something you like.  But if you haven't seen this film, I don't recommend it, even though it does hold an above average score on IMDb, the film just feels subpar and boring to me.  I have definitely seen worse films, but thankfully I have also seen much better films.  So I don't know, if a boring wannabe pretentious vampire film sounds like a good time to you, then check it out, but I think you can do better.