content: The many critics of this film, both in the national press and on Amazon, are right, in spades; De Palma's picture's one of the weakest of his wildly uneven career. I'm a great fan of THE MAN WHO LAUGHS, but I defy anyone unfamiliar with that film to sort out its use in the present plot. And the dialogue's so ridiculously stilted and stuffed with bad noir pastiche jargon, it's frequently well-nigh incomprehensible. Poor, talented Fiona Shaw and the usually capable Scarlett Johansson will survive the wreck -- but please, can't we put Josh Harnett out of his (and our) misery? He's lame enough in contemporary pictures, but in period material, he's so lightweight he vanishes onscreen in a crowd of two. Reading the other pans, I'm surprised nobody's ragged on the quality of the transfer. Universal generally does well with its DVDs, but my copy of this film had a greyed tone, lacking true, deep blacks -- surely an unforgivable sin for neo-noir! What a missed opportunity.