Fay Grim

Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: May 18, 2007

6.7	USER SCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 16 Ratings

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ChadS.May 26, 2007

"Fay Grim" is exhausting to follow, but so was "Syriana", which might be the filmmaker's point. Most films about espionage are to some degree ridiculous in its labyrinthian construction. "Fay Grim" is all about style, all about the "Fay Grim" is exhausting to follow, but so was "Syriana", which might be the filmmaker's point. Most films about espionage are to some degree ridiculous in its labyrinthian construction. "Fay Grim" is all about style, all about the psuedo-seriousness in the actors' line deliveries. But even if you relax and conceed that the film's nonsensical plot is a straight-faced spoof on the spy genre(so you don't bother trying to understand the plot), "Fay Grim" is still off-puttingly repetitive. Worst of all, when the story shifts to Pakistan, there doesn't seem to be a hint of the underlying absurdness that's prevalent in the film's other locations. Because "Fay Grim" gets serious, you wonder if closer attention should've been paid to the story elements that lead up to the scene between Henry Fool(Thomas Jay Ryan) and the Osama bin Laden-wanna-be. Even the action scenes are more convincing. The filmmaker had previously used a series of frozen stills to stage his first action set-piece, but by the end of "Fay Grim", it's hard to distinguish the difference between arch satire and the real thing when we see an explosion(which is supposed to be anathemia to independent film), and a character getting shot. Only Parker Posey as the titular character makes this pretentious film worth watching.… Expand