A heavy reliance on crafty editing, drab setting and dynamic casting “The Whisper Man” harkens back to the nineties serial killer cat and mouse crime thrillers. Pitting old crime stables Robert De Niro and Michael Keaton against each other was an enticing angle. A choice that cauterizes its influence. It’s a classic crime story using the greatest hits and beats from it, and is not shy about it. Both of them have played cops and hard killing criminals many times in their accomplished careers. 

“The Whisper Man” has a compelling intro and interesting  developing the status quo, but lazy clue discoveries and formulaic strained family arch weighs down what could have been a compelling late summer thriller. Instead it goes for a glorified made for tv movie of the week. 

Back on a book by Steve Mosby using the pen name Alex North for the first time. The premise of someone is copying a noted serial killer Frank Carter-played by Keaton. It becomes personal when the grandson of a detective-played by De Niro (who was the detective that nabbed the original killer) is kidnapped by the copycat. There’s a heavy lifting scene  of “The Silence of the Lambs” in this and a noted premise from the early nineties Sigourney Weaver film “Copycat” that can’t be ignored. 

The film also features Adam Scott and MIchelle Monaghan and Hamish Linklater who are doing stellar work but are not provided any meaty dialogue or emerging scenes to make the film pop. They are mere cogs to the formula and trapped in the tropes. Each deserve more succulence for the characters.  

The film isn’t advancing or challenging the perimeters or tropes of the noted serial killer cat and mouse thriller. A genre  that permeated and flourished in the nineties. The film is cementing the formula of it. It goes where you naturally assume it will go. The father and son dynamic that is contrasted between De Niro and Keaton’s characters is not as clever as it thinks it is. It’s a film that wants to tell us thirty years in the making but feels like a person playing the oldies station on crime stories. There are just isn’t a stand out point of the film or a point that highlights. There isn’t a stand out in the whole movie, an impressive feat when you have such heavy-hitters in it. The camera chooses are tame and confirms it was made for t.v. even though it is a movie. Overall “The Whisper Man” might be a compelling book but it is glorified t.v. movie of the week.  7/10