Do Not Be Alarmed
An oddball comedy that exhausts its jokes far too soon, "Noise" contemplates the delirium imposed upon the hardworking Manhattanite by the persistent intrusion of malfunctioning car alarms.
Major composers of the last century, including Duke Ellington and John Cage, heard something magical and vibrant in the city's incessant blare and rumble — but that was before the advent of automotive security systems. "Noise" posits the automated shrieking as a singular threat to society, and to one man's well-being in particular.
After family guy David Owen's (Tim Robbins) peace of mind is shattered by the piercing eruptions of those alarms one too many times, he becomes a vigilante: the Travis Bickle of noise control. He's tentative at first, stabbing the tires of an offending vehicle or smashing a window. Gradually, though, he becomes braver and better-equipped, and begins to inflict serious property damage. David dons a trench coat and a dark hood, stalking the night with hammers and pliers dangling from a tool belt. And he fancies himself a noir-like superhero: the Rectifier.
The writer-director Henry Bean ("The Believer") works up a notion with which any New Yorker can identify, and gives Mr. Robbins the leeway to go (literally) for broke. The actor amplifies the broad comic absurdity of the premise and then shadows the humor as the Rectifier begins to consume more and more of his character's personality, thereby compromising his relationship with his wife (Bridget Moynahan) — a cello player of the requisite dark, slim, and beautiful variety — and his young daughter. Before long, the Rectifier's actions transform him into a folk hero, as tabloids puzzle over his identity and the city's blowhard Mayor Schneer (William Hurt) huffs and puffs, pledging to bring the rascal to justice.
Mr. Hurt's performance is upstaged in its awfulness by his fawning assistant (played by one of the Baldwin brothers who is not Alec; okay, it's William), and both men are bad signs that the movie is transpiring in an alternate universe. The greasy pomp that looked brilliant on Mr. Hurt in "A History of Violence" is only cartoonish here. If Mr. Bean intends to satirize New York bureaucracy, he would be better off going after Mayor Bloomberg's ban on cigarette smoking. The city's current administration has more in common with Mr. Robbins's quality-of-life obsessed antihero than with Mr. Hurt's caricature of civic snobbishness.
But all that is really a sidebar. The movie's other wacky move is to frame the Rectifier's rise as an excuse for a full-blown midlife crisis. After the wife kicks him out, David takes up with a sexy, younger, Russian supermodel — oops, I meant aspiring journalist — played by the champion Russian gymnast-turned-actress Margarita Levieva. But instead of finishing her investigative story, she joins David in his cause, in his bed, and in a drunken threesome after an antinoise campaign victory party. Inspired by his lover's activist ardor, David turns from a yuppie Bernie Goetz into a grinning, goofball version of Mr. Smith.
And after all this, his wife still wants him back? Well, duh. Nothing else in "Noise" subscribes to reality, either. Mr. Bean is, at the very least, consistent.
