Playing against type must present a great attraction to any mainstream star bored with making the same film for the tenth time to satisfy their agents demands to have a better defined public persona. Similarly doing a low budget independent film to prove that fame hasn't changed them has flattered more than one ego over the years. Unfortunately the product of these two things is usually the ugly bug a windscreen type mess of an interesting squashed beneath the shortcomings of a showboating star performance. One Hour Photo is the opposite of this.
Robin Williams plays Sy, the manager of a the one hour photo development booth at an American supermarket. Sy is courteous, talented and caring about his job, he is also dangerously obsessed with the lives of a family who develop all their pictures at his booth. Soon this obsession is spiralling out of control.
To say that Robin Williams is a revelation is an understatement. In fact attempting to adequately enthuse about the subtly restraint and power of a performance that could unsettle a major land mass is likely to cause any reviewer sprained muscles. Suffice to say that Insomnia clearly represented Williams on autopilot and Patch Adams must have been him sleepwalking. The pacing and composition of the film are expertly judged with the ultra normality of the surroundings and the proliferation of whites and greys perfectly capturing the emptiness of the life drawing Sy to insanity. One Hour Photo is never graphic or obscene, but on an emotional level it is devastating and has one of the graceful and inventive endings in years, one that is characteristic of the whole film.