E ntirely preposterous as it is, there’s a fair bit of entertainment to be had in what might be called an erotic pulp-noir from screenwriter turned director Adam Cooper, adapted from the 2017 crime bestseller The Book of Mirrors by Eugene Chirovici . I can imagine Brian De Palma being interested in it – and he might have wanted to twist the eroticism dial clockwise a click or two more. Russell Crowe plays Roy Freeman, a depressed ex-cop whose wife left him long ago, battling to stay on the wagon, living in squalor and undergoing an experimental treatment to reverse his early onset dementia; he has labels on everything in his apartment to remind him what they’re for – but still occasionally opens the microwave to find the TV remote, completely fried.
One day he is visited by a prison charity worker, begging him to visit a former junkie and burglar now on death row for the murder, 10 years previously, of charismatic psychology professor Joseph Wieder (Márton Csókás) – a case which Roy once worked with his partner Jimmy, a tough detective played by Crowe’s fellow Gladiator cast member Tommy Flanagan. Roy can just about retrieve uneasy memories of Jimmy beating a confession out of this individual. Prof Wieder was having an affair with his brilliant, beautiful grad student Laura, played by Karen Gillan with hilariously haughty glacial mannerisms; she was an enthusiast for dangerous, transgressive sex as well as having a relationship with highly strung literature .
