One thing movies tend to do for the most part really badly is portray realistic geniuses. I mean geniuses, not just smart people. The people whose brains run on different tracks. Almost uniformly these characters get slotted into two tracks: the comic relief nerd (Egon in Ghostbusters) or the crazy savant (for example, the horrifically bad A Beautiful Mind). Worst of all is the tortured genius genre, wherein the filmmakers take pains to make sure we all understand how tortured the genius in question is, merely because he’s a genius. How persecuted a genius must be!
Zero Effect is that rare accomplishment: a movie about a tortured genius that avoids cliche, easy answers, and mawkish sentimentalism. It’s also very entertaining on a quiet, subtle scale; the dialogue crackles and the plot is brilliant. It also manages to portray the fact of being a genius in an original, compelling way.
Darryl Zero (Bill Pullman) is the aforementioned genius – the “world’s greatest private detective,” but for real. He apes certain trappings of Sherlock Holmes (naming his cases with ostentatious names like The Case Of The Man With The Nonexistent Suitcases), but he’s also an emotional wreck – agoraphobic, obsessive-compulsive and with social skills that are poor. But – and this is wonderful – over the course of the movie it becomes apparent that he is these things not because he is a genius, but because like everyone else on the planet, he is fucked up in his own way.
A “before he got real famous and annoying”-era Ben Stiller plays Zero’s Archie Goodwin analogue, Steve Arlo. Steve hates his job, but remains loyal to his boss even as he realizes he has to quit, and assists Zero in handling the case. It’s a good dramatic performance by Stiller, who can actually act when he wants to do that. (Which, because he is rich thanks to mugging like a jackass, is not often. But frankly, if I were rich thanks to mugging like a jackass, I would do the same thing.)
Arlo, on behalf of Zero, is contacted by a rich man named Stark (Ryan O’Neal at his sleazy best). Stark is being blackmailed, and wants the blackmailer found. That’s the mystery, and it absolutely ruins the movie if I tell you how Zero solves it or how it plays out – but I assure you, the payoff is excellent and the process utterly engaging.
But this isn’t just a mystery; it’s also a story about a guy who is fucked up trying to unfuck himself a little. Zero begins this process when, in the course of his investigation, he meets Gloria (the superlative Kim Dickens, who went on to play the magnificent Joanie Stubbs in Deadwood and nowadays occasionally shows up as the mother of Sawyer’s kid in Lost), an enigmatic EMT with obvious smarts. It spoils nothing to say that Gloria ends up being involved in the mystery to an extent (I mean, come on), but how she is involved and the ramifications of her interactions with Zero are fascinating to watch.
This is a difficult post to write because the process of watching this movie is half the fun; it’s just well-written on a scale that’s amazing, every performance is just about perfect and the direction by Jake Kasdan is competent enough to know not to get in the way. As I write this, I want to explain how the follow-the-money sequence brilliantly shows, rather than tells, how great a genius Darryl Zero is (and does so with a narrative voiceover, normally the bane of evocative filmmaking). But if I did, that would ruin it.
So you’ll just have to trust me on this one.
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If ever there was a movie that cried out for a sequel or two, it’s Zero Effect.
An excellent movie. I remember it being oddly paced — it felt like the first movie by a very good talent, someone who had a great future but hadn’t quite gotten used to how movies usually work.
“Zero Effect” is satisfying in a number of ways, and it’ll stick with you. Most worthy of watching.
The director’s commentary by Jake Kasdan is a hoot, IIRC. When he recorded it apparently director commentary tracks were a very new thing and he seemed to think it would only be heard by erudite film scholars and by people who knew him personally. Variations on the theme “I had no idea what I was doing as a director and it’s a goddamn miracle that I didn’t ruin the awesome performances or my own fairly rocking script.”
I haven’t seen this, but my favorite “writing a genius well” is Enders Game. I loves me that book, largely due to that.
Lack of genius is something that I always find disappointing in Fantastic Four too. People always talk about Reed or Doom being super smart, but it is hard for people to write them that way without just having them invent some wacky machine. Having them actually solve problems or think things through…happens alot less. And not at all during the movies.
Thank you Adam, for reminding me of those mediocre movies. Though I would like to see a well done comic in which the Power Cosmic is stolen.
MGK, I need to see more of these. Thanks for all of them.
Wait, there are people that haven’t seen this?
For the interested, this is available from Netflix as a “Watch it Now” streaming feature.
Thanks for spotlighting this — it’s a longtime favorite of mine.
‘i have a gun and everything.’
incidentally, zero effect is one of the few movies filmed here in portland that’s actually worth watching. and actually set in portland. there’s a scene where someone (stiller?) is driving the wrong way on a major street in downtown that’s hilariously inaccurate.
not quite ‘we wanted the max train to run on the hawthorne bridge instead of the broadway bridge, so we trussed up two old accordian buses to look like a fake train and had tommy lee jones and benicio fight on it’ in the hunted ridiculous, but you get the idea.
Finally! Someone else who a) saw it and b) didn’t mind it.
There’s a good discussion about how geniuses are portrayed in film in the opening of David Foster Wallace’s “Everything and More.” The thrust of which is that the popular media use the the high incidence of genius who suffer from mental illness (like in A Beautiful Mind) as opposite sides of the gift/curse coin because it fits into a very marketable narrative: Prometheus. The brave genius who journeys to the dark places of the mind to discover gifts we all benefit from but for which he alone pays.
The truth I think is closer to the high incidence of substance abuse to famous writers. There may be something about the lifestyle and personalities that make it more likely than the general population, but it’s the talent that outshines the condition (and brings it into the spotlight) not the condition that bolsters the talent.
Completely agree about Zero Effect. I still love the treatise about “Finding Things”
I saw that movie once and really liked it, then never found it again or even remembered the title. Thanks.
I loved this movie too, but it’s more than a little like Sherlock Holmes the story is actually based on the Sherlock Homes story Scandal in Bohemia.