Before it goes completely off the rails into yoga sex and ill-advised special effects, The Keep manages to establish an intriguing sense of atmosphere and dread. In 1941 Romania, a German military unit arrives in a remote village to take over the mysterious, medieval fortress carved into the mountainside. It’s a vast, ominous space, one that director Michael Mann and cinematographer Alex Thomson invest with spooky possibility. But as more and more characters arrive and the metaphysical forces at play become literalized with subpar effects work, The Keep loses its potency as a World War II parable about evil in the world. Among the cast is Gabriel Byrne as a sadistic SS officer; an actively bad Ian McKellen as a captive Jewish professor; Alberta Watson as his doting daughter; and a woefully miscast Scott Glenn as a hunky savior figure. A filmmaker with a comic-book sensibility might have been able to pull this off, but Mann fares better when sublimating the metaphysical into the nocturnal neon landscapes of the likes of Thief (his debut, made just before this), Collateral, and Heat.
(1/3/2023)
