Ryan Gosling Teamed Up With Sandra Bullock For A Dark Crime Thriller You've Likely Never Seen
Barbet Schroeder's 2002 crime thriller "Murder By Numbers" is one of those many, many Hollywood films that have kind of slipped into the memory hole. It sported a decent budget — $50 million — and starred Sandra Bullock, one of the hottest Hollywood actresses working at the time. It had a decent advertising push and even came with a prestigious director; Schroeder made films like "Barfly," "Reversal of Fortune," and "Single White Female." The flick also sported supporting performances from celebrated actors Chris Penn and Ben Chaplin.
Most notably, this was a star showcase from the then-upcoming talents Michael Pitt and Ryan Gosling. Pitt had just come off of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," and Gosling was establishing himself on TV in shows like "Young Hercules," so "Murder By Numbers" was a step up for both of them. They played co-leads in a studio murder-mystery picture and got to act opposite a giant movie star. "Murder By Numbers" had everything going for it.
Except for the people who saw it, as they all promptly forgot about it. "Murder By Numbers" is painfully average. The screenplay by Tony Gayton was, well, very by the numbers, bringing few original ideas to its Leopold & Loeb riff. What could have been a fascinating character study into the mind of a pair of adolescent killers was instead an off-the-rack cop flick that wouldn't have felt out-of-place in the middle of any season of "Law & Order." The film only has a 30% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 126 reviews) and only made $56.7 million at the box office. Odd that a face-off between huge stars like Ryan Gosling and Sandra Bullock should be so obscure today. It can, at the very least, be rented on Prime Video.
No one remembers Murder By Numbers
The story of "Murder By Numbers" closely mirrors that of Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope" from 1948, which was itself based on a 1929 play of the same title. All of them were inspired by the real-life murders committed by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who killed a 14-year-old boy in 1924, feeling that they were intellectually superior to most people, giving them license to kill.
The Leopold and Loeb figures in "Murder By Numbers" are Richard and Justin (Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt), two high school friends who have affected an intellectually superior attitude over their peers. They want to test their moral resolve, and do so by kidnapping and strangling a young woman, and then framing a local janitor. They think they've gotten away with it, but Detective Cassie Wayweather (Sandra Bullock) is on the case. She suspects that the murder isn't as cut-and-dry as it looks, as she spots Richard's footprint near where the dead body was found, and spies a small pile of Justin's vomit; Justin was the less murderous of the two, and was rattled at the sight of death.
The plot then meanders off the case to unremarkable asides. The side plots should increase the drama, but really feel like wheel-spinning. Justin, for instance, has a crush on a classmate named Lisa (Agnes Bruckner), but Richard seduces her out of spite. We also learn that Detective Mayweather was once viciously stabbed by her ex-husband, and that he's about to be paroled from an extended prison stay. Eventually, Mayweather begins to sense that Richard and Justin committed the murder, and is piecing together the evidence against them.
Ryan Gosling plays a murderous jerk in Murder By Numbers
It's astonishing how little Sandra Bullock's character contributes to the actual story of "Murder By Numbers." It would have been nice to delve into her character's past more and have more incidental scenes of her life, unrelated to the murder. Really, this is Ryan Gosling's film, as he is the more vicious of the two killers. He is amoral and manipulates everyone around him, Justin most of all. It's revealed along the way that Richard has rich parents, so "Murder By Numbers" becomes a flaccid commentary on the amorality of the wealthy. A salient point, perhaps, but old hat.
As mentioned, critics didn't much like "Murder By Numbers." Neil Smith, writing for the BBC, gave the film two stars (out of five) and wrote that the two supposedly genius murderers seemed pretty dumb and behaved in a very suspicious fashion. He liked Gosling's performance but also said that "it's not enough to rescue the film from its by-the-numbers plotting and laughably overblown climax."
Standing against popular opinion was Roger Ebert, who gave the film three stars (out of four), writing that Sandra Bullock's character was actually complex and interesting. His review read:
"Bullock does a good job here of working against her natural likability, creating a character you'd like to like, and could like, if she weren't so sad, strange and turned in upon herself. She throws herself into police work not so much because she's dedicated as because she needs the distraction, needs to keep busy and be good to assure herself of her worth."
For the most part, though, "Murder By Numbers" slipped away, not leaving much of a trace. It was a stepping stone for everyone in the cast, who would each go on to bigger and better things.