Murder by Numbers

The Leopold and Loeb murder case revisited, once again. Gosling and Pitt are spoilt, parentally unsupervised classmates Richard and Justin, flirtatiously conspiring to 'derange the world' by committing the perfect murder and then leading the investigating authorities a merry dance. But they reckoned without Bullock's seen-it-all detective Cassie Mayweather. Her distinguishing features are a no-nonsense professionalism, a consequently strained relationship with macho male colleagues, and repressed memories of a brutal relationship, which director Schroeder drags out (through opaque, unpersuasive flashbacks) in order to underscore a cheap closing parallel with the boys' crime. Before this, the film pries into Cassie's dating habits, throws in insinuations of class antagonism, and keeps back an isolated old cabin as the location for a routine, literally 'cliff-hanging' finale.