Secret in Their Eyes

Secret in Their Eyes is a tightly wound thriller that will keep viewers guessing until the very end – unless, of course, they’re familiar with the source material: the book by Eduardo Sacheri or the Oscar-winning Argentinean film from 2009. In that case, the movie may seem like a better-than-average police procedural that features tamped-down performances by previous Oscar winners and nominees.

Chillier than its Argentine predecessor, this new rendition was written and directed by Billy Ray, the screenwriter of Flightplan, Captain Phillips, and the first Hunger Games movie, as well as the writer/director of Shattered Glass. The Argentinean film included details of that country’s so-called Dirty War as part of the plot; the American remake instead uses 9/11 as its political reference point. Additionally, the sex of one of the key characters is changed, but otherwise, the story outlines are, to the best of my recollection, the same.

One of the intrinsic difficulties of the story is that it takes place in two time periods, set 13 years apart, and it’s not always as easy as you might think to tell the difference. The time periods are interwoven, and the only things that differentiate them are the physical characteristics of the individuals, which aren’t always obvious at first glance. In the early part set in 2002, Ray (Ejiofor) and Jess (Roberts) are FBI investigators whose main task is to remotely surveil a mosque in Los Angeles, while Claire (Kidman) is a Harvard-educated newcomer to the D.A.’s office, who is out of Ray’s romantic league even though he has a deep crush on her. A horrible crime takes the life of one character’s daughter (played by Austin native Zoe Graham, last seen in Boyhood). Thirteen years later, Ray shows up again, believing he has finally identified the killer after years of painstaking research, and wants to reopen the case.

Julia Roberts is the only central character whose appearance is drastically different in the two time periods, and it remains to be seen if the pretty woman with the million-dollar smile will be accepted as a character bearing a pinched face and dead eyes or whether it will seem like stunt casting despite a solid performance. The other characters barely change between the two time periods, and neither do their personalities; they behave like something is holding them back. Billy Ray is an adept craftsman when it comes to plotting thrillers, but his work here with the actors seems all but absent.