Disappointing and unsubtle (SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS)

This film has significant problems in pretty much every department: plot, structure, scripting, directing, editing, music; you name it, there are things wrong with it. And Daniel Olbrychski seems to have turned into a snarling monosyllabic caricature of what he used to be in his younger years.

Director Eugenius Korin clearly wants to be Christopher Nolan with his parallel storylines and portentous speeches, and even borrows images or sequences from Nolan's back-catalogue to let us know that this is going to be a puzzle of a plot that we won't be able to unravel until all the pieces are in place. Regrettably, he undoes that by telegraphing every plot point and character trait in the first act so that by the denouement, we are left scratching our heads wondering why he thought he was so clever.

It's difficult to assess this film critically without revealing the resolution of the police procedural element of the plot (what the "baddies" are up and why, and the owner of the voice at the other end of the phone), but I wonder if the viewer isn't meant to work those quickly anyway.

The direction and script keep telling us exactly where to look for the answers to the main questions in any thriller, and we are ultimately left unthrilled. When our hero finally works it out for himself, I for one wasn't impressed with his deductive powers, I was fairly disgusted that a PhD in astrophysics had taken so long to join some rather large dots. I had worked it out in full by the time we made our second visit to the baddies' headquarters.

I have seen variations of this plot done at least twice before on television, so maybe I was a bit too ready to work it all out. The various elements of the film not directly connected to the police investigation could have been scripted and acted more subtly, leaving the resolution more of a surprise.

I also found it very strange that Wolin seemed to be conducting most of his investigation in his very stylish apartment rather than at the station - admittedly there were fears that other officers were involved in the plot, but this was just a little absurd. And writing self-evident pieces of information on his blackboard in the format of meaningless algebraic formulae was a waste of energy. knocking the audience on the head with obvious data. This could have been achieved much more successfully and cinematically in dialogue with Bozek.

Purely in terms of the investigation, several things simply didn't add up (and these are all spoilers so be careful if you choose to read on):

The two small-time gangsters framed for what was going on took themselves out of the action very quickly and without a fuss just because they knew the plot demanded it. This made no sense whatsoever in the context of who they were.

The whole film went to great lengths to show that Wolin was a by-the-book, straightlaced, incorruptible investigator, so it was no surprise that the General puts him on the case. But we're given no reason why the General trusts Bozek so much. And given his character, why did Wolin not voice his concerns to the General rather than take on the investigation himself?

Maybe I've watched too much CSI and Silent Witness but why did the police not think that there was something odd about Leman's gun being empty?

Why on earth was nothing made of the fact that all of the victims had been left with organs missing? Alarm bells should have been ringing up and down the autopsy room at that discovery - but then the film would have been half an hour shorter and Sep would not have had his showdown with the gang.

The whole scenario with Leman and the strangler in the apartment was just ridiculous, and the gang put FAR too much faith in two (utterly clichéd, bible-quoting, tongue-lashing, *beep* psychopaths doing what they had been told - the scene could have been staged much more simply and effectively without risking it would all go wrong, but again the duration of the film demanded it.

And final spoiler - how did Sep engineer his end without harming his heart? Whatever he injected himself with would have had an effect on his cardio-vascular ssystem, which was exactly what he did not want.

The moral question at the heart of the plot was an interesting one, but left completely unresolved - Sep is far to clever not to have worked out a different answer for himself.

I'm just glad there won't be a Sep II!

A central question in Korin's hero's Dark Knight trilogy is whether Batman is needed and does Gotham deserve him. I don't think I needed Sep and I certainly didn't deserve a film this poor trying to be Hoolywod-on-the-Vistula!