Closed Circuit

The central idea of Closed Circuit - an audience watches a spaghetti Western in a cinema; as it finishes the gunman on screen shoots and a member of the audience drops dead with a bullet hole in his chest - is just fine. Sadly, the film proceeds to dissipate its generic thriller elements in stodgy Italian stereotyping and overplaying, while never quite having the courage to fully develop its philosophical pretensions about the spectator and the screen. Unable to resolve its dilemma, it opts for an unsatisfying mish-mash of half-baked notions and presents it as a climax.