Christian Bale as Augustus Landor (left) and Harry Melling as Edgar Allan Poe star in this film (Picture: Scott Garfield/Netflix via AP)
An old-fashioned, slow-burning detective yarn, The Pale Blue Eye mixes a little fact with a lot of fiction.
The fact is that Edgar Allan Poe, the 19th-century author of macabre stories like The Raven, attended U.S. military academy West Point.
The fiction is…well, everything else, in an 1830-set story that sees Christian Bale’s detective Augustus Landor called into the famed academy to investigate a gruesome murder. A cadet has been found hanged, with his body mutilated.
When he starts his investigations, Landor meets the young Poe (Harry Melling), who seems to spend his time boozing in a local bar rather than training to be a military man.
It’s a neat conceit that the fictional Landor gets a few clues to the case from Poe, who in reality was credited as single-handedly inventing the detective story. Melling, the British actor last seen in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy Of Macbeth, brings a suitable oddness to the role too.
Along the way, there are more murders, made all the more chilling by the stark, wintry East Coast backdrop. As with any good mystery story, suspicion falls on just about everybody, from Poe to Toby Jones’ West Point surgeon and his family (Lucy Boynton and Harry Lawtey, as the offspring, and Gillian Anderson, who goes full-on weird as his near-hysterical spouse).
It’s set to be released in the cinema first before heading to Netflix (Picture: Scott Garfield/Netflix via AP)
Director Scott Cooper, who previously made Out Of The Furnace and Hostileswith Bale, keeps his powder dry for a long time, and The Pale Blue Eye is not for those expecting wham-bam action.
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But there are some beautifully staged scenes – notably a fight that takes place in a fog-shrouded landscape – making it worth the trip to the cinema.
With an ace support cast (Timothy Spall, Charlotte Gainsbourg and even the legendary Robert Duvall all pop up), it’s a class act from start to finish.
The Pale Blue Eye (15) is in cinemas from December 23 and on Netflix from January 5.
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It’s set in 1830.
