Review of Monkey`s Mask, The

Introduction

Jill Fitzpatrick is a street-smart private investigator that is hired to find out the whereabouts of a young teenage girl called Mickey. Mickey is a poetry fanatic and attends lectures, her poetry lecturer is Diana (Kelly McGillis) who Jill gets to meet and befriend quite well, Diana describes Mickey as a “sweet exterior” but a “boiling passion” inside. She tells Jill that she teaches what is called “victim poetry”, and mentions that the girls love it. Jill finds herself fantasising about Diana and this leads to numerous sexual encounters with her even though Diana has a husband, but who hardly notices that she is there.
Jill moves around questioning other people in the poetry line of work, or who have come into contact with Mickey. Jill eventually finds out that Mickey has been discovered dead by strangulation at the bottom of her own home, and so the search turns into the hunt for a murderer.

Video

The movie is in an anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1 format and has a clear, clean transfer to it with no signs of dropouts or grain. The black colours are dark and bold; enough detail can be seen though and is not blocked out during the darker scenes at night for example. The daytime scenes are clean in colour and detail and are a brighter contrast to the night scenes featured. The skin tones of the characters are also quite clear and realistic, although Jill’s complexion looks slightly pale at times. Diana’s skin tones are warmer and actually could just be make up to hide the fact that this “old bag”, as she states herself, was that gorgeous bombshell from ‘Top Gun’ once, how times have changed.
The locations used in this movie differ between busy and tranquil types, the busy parts of the movie show Jill walking about town, past cars and people, large buildings and areas circle around her as she searches out information and does her job. One scene emphasises a tranquil style by having Jill doing Ti Chi with a group on a high grassy hillside overlooking the coast, other scenes include trees, woodland and lakes that are mainly used for scene integration. During the scene on Diana’s apartment balcony, you get a view over the city with its huge buildings towering upwards; the height makes this a tranquil shot also.
Jill and Diana have a lot of café/dinner meetings that are interior shots and a bit less scenic. Some of the darker scenes have a fog rolling around the roads; this gives a great spooky atmosphere to them but doesn’t quite scare due to the plot of the movie not being a horror type. The movie is split into sixteen chapters some of which appear on the screen between scenes, like reading chapters in a book and similar to the way used in ‘Pulp Fiction’. Semi or fully Nude scenes of the two females are frequent and feature at eight different scenes approximately throughout and apart from the murder plot, are concentrated on quite a bit.

Audio

The audio is in Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 but all variations of music and the dialogue are clear and can be heard well enough. Ambience and smaller effects are quite clear too; in one scene you see Jill’s father drinking some tea and even his gulping can be heard clearly. The music featured is by ‘Single Gun Theory’ and is a paced or fast paced, nineties style beat on most occasions for example in the opening scene of the bar or when Jill drives over the bridge. Indian style tom tom drums are a part of a little riff featured in one segment of music. Mellow piano tunes fill in some scenes and additional strings gently accompany the piano bits of certain ones and are done by Antony Partos, female vocals over a ‘racy’ beat are also used in small sections of the end scenes for example, once Jill has cracked the case. Groove Armada’s ‘At The River’ track is also featured in this movie in the scene where Jill meets Diana in a bar and is kept waiting; this is a smooth subtle track to suite the mood.

Features

The menu is a full screen picture of an erotic scene from the movie, featuring one woman on top of another; both are fully naked on a bed. The picture has a slight blur to it, the title is at the top in lowercase lettering and play movie, chapters and subtitles are the only options to choose from.

Conclusion

An interesting plot in the ways of how the movie is portrayed and showed, it was nice to see two sides of Jill clad in her leather jacket and on the search for Mickey, as well as an erotic and innocent looking side to her. The movie features a few characters and it is easy to get mixed up with who is involved and who might be a red herring at times during the plot, and things only come clear once Jill has investigated further. The story isn’t a fast paced one and the lack of action keeps it this way, although the erotic scenes and good use of ‘up beat’ style music make it to a watch able standard. The Monkey’s Mask is in a way similar to an Australian version of ‘Basic Instinct’ with its thriller like plot and erotic parts included.