The Pale Blue Eye – Film Review

West Point, 1830. In the early hours of a gray winter morning, a cadet is found dead. But after the body arrives at the morgue, tragedy becomes savagery when it’s discovered that the young man’s heart has been skillfully removed. Fearing irreparable damage to the fledgling military academy, its leaders turn to a local detective, Augustus Landor (Christian Bale), to solve the murder. Stymied by the cadets’ code of silence, Landor enlists the help of one of their own to pursue the case, an eccentric cadet with a disdain for the rigors of the military and a penchant for poetry — a young man named Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling).

Anybody that knows me knows that I’m a complete sucker for murder mystery thrillers. There’s just something so incredibly comforting and investing about watching a detective trying to piece together an intricate, complex murder case. It feels like us, the viewer, is also helping the detective solve it.

Rian Johnson‘s Knives Out and Glass Onion have been the two greatest examples of murder mysteries in recent years that remind us how great these kinds of movies can be. And despite having some genuinely wondrous and dazzling atmosphere, Scott Cooper‘s The Pale Blue Eye is one of the blandest and uneventful murder mysteries in a long time.

By all accounts, this should’ve been absolutely great. Cooper previously directed the chilling supernatural horror film Antlers which is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated horror films in ages. Cooper has proven himself multiple times to be an excellent filmmaker as well as a great writer.

So… what went wrong here? This is based on the novel of the same name by Louis Bayard, so perhaps Cooper had some struggles in adapting already existing material. The Pale Blue Eye is an exceptionally sloppy film that jumps from place to place and from character to character far too rapidly for anything to be even remotely coherent.

It’s one of those movies that will surely give you a headache despite, on paper, sounding like a straight-forward, juicy mystery flick. This should’ve placed its focus and attention on one specific area instead of darting around like a pinball machine. There are some moments in which the film gets legitimately interesting, but when it does, it’s a bit too little too late.

It also suffers from some sluggish pacing that makes the already daunting one-hundred-and-twenty-eight minute running time even more painful to get through. This could’ve easily benefited from some scenes being completely axed and it would’ve not only told the same story, but it would’ve told it more coherently.

One thing I will say that’s immensely positive about The Pale Blue Eye is its lead performance from Christian Bale in the role of Augustus Landor. It’s the third time that Cooper and Bale have worked together following Out of the Furnace and Hostiles, and it’s not hard to see why Cooper loves hiring this man.

He’s one of the best actors working today, and he’s never turned out a genuinely bad performance. Is this one of the best performances of his career? Definitely not. But for the kind of character that he was supposed to be portraying, he did a marvelous job. It’s also quite nice to see Harry Melling get some more work following his success on Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit.

Unless you’re a die-hard Bale fan, you probably shouldn’t bother checking out this film as it’ll likely leave you rather disappointed instead of intrigued. Not one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long time but it’s definitely not one that I would call good. Better luck next time, Scott Cooper.

The Pale Blue Eye is a convoluted and sluggishly paced murder mystery thriller with an admittedly great atmosphere and a strong Christian Bale performance.