Robin Williams will no doubt forever be remembered for his comedy work. He was a rapid-fire joke machine, and even if they weren’t always funny, they came out fast enough that a better joke would come along fairly quickly. But Williams did have asperations to do serious drama as well. He just rarely got the chance to show off some of the acting chops he had, most notably perhaps in Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia.
So, while One Hour Photo is probably not on the level of that Nolan film, it is another showcase for Williams’s dramatic acting skills.
Photo technician Sy Parrish (Williams) doesn’t seem to have much going on in his life outside of his job. He works out of a Wal*Mart type of store, and he greatly identifies with the seemingly perfect Yorkin family. Though Sy in his opening narration states quite clearly that photos are often just what people want others to see and remember and can be misleading, he’s come to the conclusion that the Yorkins have it all. He mostly deals with wife and mother Nina (Connie Nielsen) and her young son Jake (Dylan Smith), but he at least knows husband and father Will (Michael Vartan) on sight and feels like he really knows the family.
Of course, every family has problems, and Will and Nina are no exception. What happens when Sy, seeing other photos coming in from other customers, learns a dark secret about Will? His behavior on the job is already sketchy enough for his boss Bill (Gary Cole), but something like this could push Sy over the edge, and then, well, he might do something horrible.
Credit where it’s due: Williams is good in this, and while a lot of movies would have had Sy falling for Nina or something, his interests in her is never remotely romantic. He just wants to be a part of this family somehow. It’s noteworthy that he lives alone with just a hamster, and hamsters are generally understood to be nervous animals that spend most of their lives inside a cage of some kind. That could describe Sy whose knowledge of the world outside his job is limited greatly to what he sees in the pictures he develops. When he finally meets Will and chats with the man, it’s clear Sy sees more to the relationship than Will does.
That said, the movie somewhat falls apart in the climax when Sy finally does what he’s going to do. Granted, it’s hard to keep tension going, but it still seems to fizzle out a bit. Likewise, for all that Williams is good in the role, even with the other characters being not as well developed, he is somewhat doing another version of his Insomnia character, and that was a much better role in a much better movie. Still, for most of the movie, it holds up quite well and does what it needs to do.
Grade: B-
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