Movie Review—Secret in Their Eyes

The Secret in Their Eyes

by Peter J. O'Connell

Secret in Their Eyes. Released: Nov. 2015. Runtime: 111 mins. Rated: PG-13 for thematic material involving disturbing violent content, language and some sexual references.

It's 2002 in Los Angeles, and a joint task force of police agencies is investigating possible terrorist connections to a local mosque. When a report is received that a young woman has been raped and murdered and her body bleached and placed in a dumpster near the mosque, two members of the task force, Jess Cobb (Julia Roberts) and Ray Kasten (Chiwetel Ejiofer), go to the crime scene. There they make a devastating discovery. The victim is Carolyn Cobb, Jess' daughter.

After a period of intense sleuthing by legally dubious methods that does not produce an indictable culprit, Ray, an FBI agent, returns to the New York FBI office, which had lent him to the L.A. task force. He leaves the agency and works in private security. But he doesn't stop working on the case of his friend's daughter. Ray's unrelenting efforts on his own time over 13 years produce a discovery that brings him back to L.A. in 2015. He feels sure now that the killer can be nailed, and he persuades the supervising attorney, Claire (Nicole Kidman) to reopen the case, although Jess, who now lives in the country, advises against it and says that she has come to grips with her intense grief. Even if the killer is nailed, she would not wish capital punishment for him, just life imprisonment. Claire and Ray always

had felt an attraction for each other but had not acted on it because Claire was engaged in 2002 and had been married for years by 2015. The two do work together on the case, though, discovering new clues and leads and eventually coming to see the shocking truth, a chilling “secret.”

This story of crime and punishment (of several characters in several ways) and emotion, both suppressed and rawly expressed, is directed and co-written by Billy Ray. Chiwetel Ejiofor embodies grim determination, but with a certain sensitive quality. Nicole Kidman manifests an inner toughness that is distinct from her gaspingly gorgeous “ice princess” exterior. And Julia Roberts, appropriately haggard, has several scenes of wrenching intensity. Strong support is given by Michael Kelly, who seems to have become the go-to guy to play weasely characters in cop/lawyer/politician dramas on film and in TV. And Dean Norris is likable as Ray's sidekick, though it does seem at times as if his character from TV's Breaking Bad has somehow ended up in L.A. rather than Albuquerque.  

Secret does not proceed in the chronological manner indicated in this review. It cuts back and forth between 2002 and 2015. These transitions in time are sometimes confusing, One does not always know what year one is in because of poor editing and lack of sufficient “passage of time” distinctions in the appearance of the characters—distinctions that should have been provided by better makeup, etc.

Secret also has become a flashpoint in the controversy involving American remakes of foreign films. In the 1960s and 1970s, subtitled foreign films often drew substantial audiences in the U.S. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, that situation changed, and American audiences appeared to have become reluctant to attend subtitled films. (“Dumbing down” of the U.S.?) Consequently, Hollywood began to make English-language versions of foreign-language films that had attracted some buzz (for example, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo). This practice has led to outrage among many film fans and critics, who feel that the remakes are unnecessary and/or almost invariably inferior to the original.

Secret in Their Eyes is an English-language version (obviously, with some plot and character changes) of the Argentine film El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes), which won the Oscar for best foreign-language film in 2010. The Secret was produced, directed and co-written by Juan Jose Campanella, who served as co-writer and executive producer of Billy Ray's just-plain Secret. Is the American film an inferior work? See it with your own eyes and decide for yourself.

“Footnote” to the film: A memorable sequence in The Secret depicted the police pursuit of a suspect through a frenzied crowd at the height of a soccer match in a packed stadium. Secret redoes the sequence at a baseball game.