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Wonderful character development!

I wanted to but couldn't!

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I'm not really sure what to make of this film. The first 45 or 50 minutes are fairly unsatisfying. With good story telling you become part of the story; here I found myself watching from the outside. I found it difficult to feel empathy for anyone. No character was really particularly interesting or likable. Then there was such too much of everything happening too fast: too many murders, too many sex scenes etc. Keeley Hawes' sex scenes are very, very erotic but I can't help wondering why they are in the film. After about 50 minutes, the suspense starts kicking in and the film becomes quite interesting and well paced. Unfortunately, you also can be pretty sure who the killer really is. Suspenseful as the second half of the film may be, it's also a rather banal storyline. Ex-soldier starts killing bad people taking revenge for everything that has happened in his life or in his world. The killings are gruesome but then again it's nothing we have not seen before. One victim is displayed in a butcher's window: I saw that in an EC comic from the early 50s. The moral question at the end of the day is then how justified these murders are and that the law can never catch the real culprits. That is hardly an original thought or motive in crime films.

We were rather suspicious of this movie when we first sat down to watch it. My husband and I had both read the book and liked it very much, and since we hadn't heard of the adaptation before we suspected that it probably wouldn't be much good.Boy, were we ever wrong.The movie is slightly too gory at times for my personal taste, but then, so is the book. And it's hard not to be, in a story about the hunt for a mad but incredibly clever serial killer. The setting is just right, and the casting as well, and the story unfolds at a pace that just allows you to understand what's going on before the next twist to the plot.Very highly recommended.

sometimes, a film can suffer greatly from just one drawback, even if everything else is top notch. unfortunately, this is the case here.this film, based on iain banks' novel, is an impressive production, with excellent actors, breathtaking scottish settings, believable and very enjoyable character quirks, truly shocking murders, suspense and even some steamy sex.however, "complicity" doesn't quite succeed, and i can only trace it back to one thing: it's much too compressed. i haven't read the original novel, but it's obvious a great deal of it made it to the screen; unfortunately, the film's 93 minute running time just doesn't suffice for this epic tale: cameron colley's journalistic investigation into several seemingly unrelated murders, egged on by a mysterious anonymous source, which causes him to clash with his disapproving bosses; his relationships with his old friends, and the many secrets they share; his affair with yvonne; the various grisly murders as seen by the killer; flashbacks to cameron's childhood and teenage years; and the psychologically jarring moments after cameron becomes the police's prime suspect.of course, this film offers many funny, thrilling, surprising and shocking moments, but they're all a bit rushed. a longer format would have benefitted this film greatly. banks' exceedingly clever and profound story manages to come over very well, but the film is so densely packed that i'd recommend you take small breaks so as to take everything in; make a cup of coffee or something and come back, as you would to a good novel (of course you could go straight to the source, but me, i'd rather watch the movie.)the fabulous bbc production of banks' "the crow road" shows the extent to which a longer format is more suitable to his multifaceted stories.

I am a great Banks' fan, and was awaiting this film eagerly. I am quite disappointed, though the film would presumably, if taken at face value and not compared to the novel, be OK.[Further text might constitute mild spoilers to some readers]The first thing one notices is that most material from the book is somehow stuffed into the film (with notable exception of Cameron's cancer and Basra Road episode - sorry for referring to the novel). The result is rapid succession of events that get barely touched, not leaving room for atmosphere or, paradoxically, even decent suspense to develop. There isn't a trace of suffocating mood of the novel. Events follow each other at the pace that does not allow them to evolve and to give viewer chance to absorb them. I think that Millar and Elsley would have done much better job if given (the superb BBC TV mini-series, also after Banks) The Crow Road format.Otherwise, the film is technically good. Casting and acting is very good, with one crucial exception: IMHO, Cameron is too young, far too cheerful and devoid of air of impeding doom around him.And BTW, DVD producers should have included, under excuse of doing that for the benefit of hearing impaired, English subtitles (Scottish accent is quite difficult for non-native speakers). I plan to watch the film one or two times more to see whether my opinion will improve by simply catching more of what was said :)