The Crime Hypothesis, the director’s regret about the 9/11 attacks.

Director Roger Michel and released in theaters in 2002. Crime hypothesis this is a movie that will air tonight at 21.45 on channel La7.

Crime hypothesis, plot

Gavin Banek (ur.Ben Affleck) is a young man who makes his way into the world of US law. Dealing with a very important case, he rushes to the court, which may or may not justify the success of his career. But the chaotic movement of New York stands before him as an obstacle to be overcome. Between the same streets stuck Doyle Gipson (Samuel L. Jackson), a regular in Alcoholics Anonymous, is divorced and late for a meeting with a judge who will have to make laws about his right to see his children. They have nothing in common, and their lives have not even remotely touched. However, it is precisely because of traffic jams and the rush of both that the main characters end up colliding and getting into a banal traffic accident. It will be the fuse that will ignite the fire of exaggerated reactions that will cause them to turn into unscrupulous people, ready to do anything, almost competitive, to get what they think they are about to lose.

director’s regret

An action movie that never managed to become more than just a product of (good) entertainment. Crime hypothesis however, this operation turns out to be interesting because it allows us to think about how the cinema and the entertainment world in general reacted to the horrific attack on the Twin Towers in New York on that nefarious September 11, 2001. Released in 2002. , Crime hypothesis was in full operation when the two hijacked planes fell on world trade center, effectively creating a historical point of caesura between “before” and “after”, giving life to a kind of new modern era that has come to change even the everyday aspects of one’s life. How has the entertainment world handled all this? A very famous example is the episode from Friends, famous sitcom with Jennifer Aniston, which on the fly changed the script so as not to force New Yorkers to relive the nightmare they had just experienced. In the third episode of the eighth season, viewers follow Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Monica (Courteney Cox) as they go on their honeymoon, developing a rivalry with the newlyweds, who, being “cuter” than them, have a lot of privilege. As writesInsiders, the storyline of this episode is changed to running. The “original” script essentially stipulated that the two main characters wouldn’t even be able to leave for their honeymoon because of Chandler’s joke about airport bombs. It was too sensitive a matter for a country that was still bleeding from all the casualties. attacks

and for this reason it was decided to go the other way. But it prompted reflection: was it right to exclude all references to 9/11? Was it right for the cinema to try to erase the attacks as if they never happened? On the one hand, there were such directors as Spike Lee What 25th hour Not only did he leave out references to attacks, he added them precisely to draw attention to injury. On the other hand, there were those who, on the contrary, did everything possible to remove all mentions.

Roger Michell, of course, did not expect that his film would deal with the twin towers, but, as the book says The Twin Towers on Film: A Cinematic History of New York’s World Trade Center, movie Crime hypothesis a shot of the Twin Towers was shown in the opening sequence. Crime hypothesis opens with a bird’s eye view of New York and its movement, almost a film version of the “Aerial View of Paris” that Victor Hugo inserted at the beginning Cathedral of Notre Dame. In this shot, the point of view of one of the shots is given to a car driving along the famous Fifth Avenue towards the Washington Arch. Twin Towers appearing in the background. In the next frame, two towers fill the screen, in the frame they are brought to the fore. At this point, Roger Michell, mindful of what had just fallen in the Big Apple, decided to capture this image digitally. As indicated on the website‘Internet movie database,

The director later regretted his decision and spoke at length in the commentary of the film featured in the DVD specials. The director later regretted his decision: the cancellation of the Twin Towers, in his opinion, was to pretend that nothing had happened, that nothing had changed. An attitude that he considered disrespectful not only to New Yorkers, but to all viewers. Thus, at the stage of re-editing, the director again added an “offensive” shot.