Matthew Stechel Peter Boyle stars as a cop dressed in a very bright blue suit who is convinced that this murder he is assigned to investigate is the work of this elaborate conspiracy. The murder is of an older Torah scholar rabbinical student who is convinced he found the 9th name of God (or was it the 10th?) and while Boyle's partner (dressed in a very Dick Tracey like bright yellow suit) whom while also serving as the film's narrator is quite happy to write off the murder as a random break-in/wrong time-wrong place type of case.Boyle becomes more and more determined to prove that this murder is the work of this cabal of murderers desperate to keep the name secret and hidden. Boyle basically goes off the deep end here becoming increasingly stubborn in his urgent cries of conspiracy here. (At one point looking at a map of three seemingly unrelated murders--he draws a triangle connecting all three points, and then proceeds to draw another point and declares it a rhomboid, which the sheer force of him declaring that statement made me laugh quite a bit--"Its Not A Traingle, Its A Rhomboid!")He's aided by an article writer played by Christopher Eccleson (for the Hebrew press no less! some kind of newsletter specifically for the Orthodox) who is very interested in seeing where Boyle goes with his investigation, but also doesn't seem to think that there's anything here realistically, but he's not gonna let his own skepticism stand in the way of a potentially good story. If anything, he can at least write a news article about Boyle's determination to see this investigation thru despite the thinnest of leads beyond his own gut. This movie is not good by a long shot. (The case really never does actually amount to anything more than Peter Boyle being very fervent in his belief that it will lead to something, and even then its kind of hard to decipher his thought process so that it makes logical sense.) The movie to the director's credit is also never boring, and it never lags. To me the film sustained its interest level throughout, but its also the kind of movie you watch late at night on TV and the next day wonder if you had possibly fallen asleep watching it because some of the details of it are so bizarre, they couldn't have possibly been in the movie itself right? Surely, you must have fallen asleep at some point and are remembering bits of a dream you had while this was on in the back round. I having seen this in a theater can assure you that it was in fact the movie and not you.That said, for everything that was interesting about the movie (including a very unusual set design) the ending of it is fairly lousy, and I have no idea if that's a fault of the short story its based on, or if that's because writer/director Alex Cox didn't do enough to set it up beforehand. Oh well. Everything up to then was still engaging enough that i'd say if you like purposefully oddball detective movies, you could do worse than this. (It might make an interesting double bill with 1992's "The Plague" which based on an Albert Camus novel was similarly interesting an adaptation set in a third world nation but also somewhat disappointing as a whole)

qv1879 In a post world war world, people eek out what living they can. A string of strange murders begin to occur and the local Detective Chief Inspector Lonrot(Peter Boyle) is on the job. He believes the murders are being committed by a gangster called Red Scarlach(Christopher Eccleston). Lonrot uses everything to hand to capture the killer and eventually comes face to face with him.I love Peter Boyle. I've seen him in the X-Files to "While You Were Sleeping", but if anyone was miscast in this role, it was him. "Death and the Compass" is a low budget film that uses spontaneity as it's guide. Director Alex Cox is a "fly by the seats of his pants" director. Thirty to forty years ago, Mr.Boyle may have been cast properly, but watching it I couldn't help but wonder if he was treading water because he wasn't sure where his footing was.Though Mr.Boyle seemed to be treading water, I didn't feel that about the other members of the cast. Maybe it was because the others of the cast were familiar with Cox's type of direction. What ever it was, it gave the movie a "driving on ice" feel. It'll be fine, then the brakes will lock and the car will slide to the side.Don't get me wrong. It wasn't a bad movie. It just needs to be done over.

Infofreak I've been looking for 'Death and the Compass' for quite some time, as I'm an admirer of the Borges story that inspired it, and I thought it would be another piece in the puzzle of Alex Cox's frustrating career. Unfortunately I didn't manage to watch it on DVD and wasn't able to listen to Cox's commentary, one which I really could have done with! On top of that I watched it in two sittings, something I don't usually like doing. I really would like to watch it a second time as I feel my concentration was wavering. Anyway, it's yet another fascinating but flawed movie from Cox, a description which describes almost all his output since 'Repo Man', which to me is still his most completely satisfying work. Peter Boyle stars as the enigmatic detective Lonnrot(he had previously worked with Cox in the unfairly maligned 'Walker'), with Christopher Eccleston ('Shallow Grave') and Cox regular Miguel Sandoval supporting. Another comment mentioned 'Element Of Crime' as a stylistic reference point and I can see that, only on presumably a much smaller budget. Of course '...Compass' isn't anywhere near as good as Von Trier's film, but it does give you some idea of what to expect. I can't say I don't have some reservations about this movie, but if you like offbeat films that play with genre and require a bit of thought, then give this a shot. Me, I want to watch it a second time and hear what Alex Cox has to say about it before I make up my mind.

cadar1729 I liked Boyle's performance, but that's about the only positive thing I can say. Everything was overdone to the point of absurdity. Most of the actors spoke like you would expect your 9-year-old nephew to speak if he were pretending to be a jaded, stone-hearted cop, or an ultra-evil villain. The raspy voice-overs seemed amateurish to me. I could go buy a cheap synthesizer and crank out better opening music. And what's with the whole 1984ish police torture stuff? It was totally superfluous and had nothing to do with the actual events of the story. Cox added a lot of things, in fact, that he apparently thought would be really cool, but had nothing to do with the story. That's a big disappointment because one of the things that makes Borges' stories so good is his minimalism -- they are tightly bound, with no superfluous details. This movie is just the opposite. I stopped watching after the scene where Lonnrot is questioning the guy from the Yidische Zaitung, or thereabouts. I wasted $4 renting this, but at least I can get some satisfaction from writing this review and hopefully saving others from making the same mistake.