The Singing Detective
- Original title
- The Singing Detective
- Year
- 2003
- Running time
- 109 min.
- Country
United States
- Director
- Screenwriter
- Cast
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- Robert Downey Jr.
- Robin Wright
- Mel Gibson
- Jeremy Northam
- Katie Holmes
- Carla Gugino
- Adrien Brody
- Jon Polito
- Saul Rubinek
- Alfre Woodard
- Amy Aquino
- David Dorfman
- Eddie Jones
- Lily Knight
- See all credits
- Cinematography
- Producer
- Genre
- Film noir. Musical. Comedy. Mystery | Crime. 1950s. Neo-noir. Medical. Remake
- Synopsis
- Based on Dennis Potter's stunningly brilliant 1986 BBC mini-series of the same name, Gordon's version finds the film's troubled hero transplanted to 1950s America, not post-WWII London. Dan Dark (Robert Downey Jr.) is a pulp novelist in the thralls of a crippling skin disease that has rendered him delusional and immobile. Bitter, angry, and at the end of his rope, Dan manages to offend everyone he encounters. As he lies in bed, scenes from his novel swim into his mind, blurring with experiences from his own childhood. In the present, he remains paranoid that his ex-wife Nicola (Robin Wright Penn) is out to steal a script he wrote. Adding to his disgust are forced visits with an uptight psychotherapist, Dr. Gibbon (Mel Gibson), who is determined to make a breakthrough with his hateful patient. Along the way, Dan envisions several musical sequences, which appear out of nowhere and add glorious confusion to his fevered state. Gordon, working from a script that Potter himself wrote before his death, delivers an imaginary, vibrant film that is aided greatly by Robert Downey Jr.'s ferocious performance.
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- Awards
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2003: Sitges Fantasy Film Festival: Best Actor (Robert Downey Jr.)2003: Satellite Awards: nominated to Actor in a Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical.
- Critics' reviews
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"The movie does not propose to be a comedy, a musical, a film noir story or a medical account. It proposes to be a subjective view of suffering, and the ways this character tries to cope with it."
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"At once daring and hackneyed, absorbing and off-putting, a triumph of one sort and, more lastingly, a failure of another"
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"Works not primarily because it's a strange and original brew, but because it accomplishes its goals without seeming to force things"
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"It is worth catching The Singing Detective to see the brilliant Robert Downey Jr. in another extraordinary performance"
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