Politicians,
according to political scientist Harold Lasswell, solve personal
problems in choosing their occupation. In Murder by
Numbers, directed by Barbet Schroeder, the same thesis
is applied to police, albeit in a subplot of the story. Police
officer Cassie Mayweather (played by Sandra Bullock) was terrorized
as a teenager by her abusive husband, who is scheduled for
a parole hearing as the film begins, admits that she choose
her profession to "get help" for her psychological
problems. But the same thesis is also applied to the characters
in the main plot, two intelligent teenagers, Richard Haywood
(played by Ryan Gosling) and Justin Pendleton (played by Michael
Pitt), whose parents give them so little recognition that
the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche stimulate them to get
that attention by murdering someone at random, believing that
"freedom is crime." Although the film clearly updates
to the age of computers and cellphones the 1924 murder committed
by Leopold and Loeb, Murder by Numbers is a
combination slow-motion thriller and psychological profile
of the three main characters. First, the teenage boys select
a murder victim, who just happens to resemble Cassie in age
and appearance, and they carefully frame a suspect, the school
janitor. When the body is discovered, the San Benito (San
Luis Obispo is the principal film location) police assign
the case to Cassie and her new junior partner Sam Kennedy
(played by Ben Chaplin). The first suspect is Haywood, because
his shoes match a sole imprint at the murder scene. When she
interviews Haywood, who appears at first to have an ironclad
alibi, she sees in him the same character flaw, egocentrism,
as in her incarcerated husband, so she is determined to nail
him for the crime. Vomit from the scene of the crime is traced
to Justin, so he comes under investigation later. Accordingly,
the boys next arrange to kill the school janitor, making the
death appear to be a suicide, so that the police will be thrown
off the track. The police chief, accordingly, wants the case
dropped. Cassie, however, persists secretly; she photographs
the two boys together, refuting their claim not to know each
other well, and their alibis begin to unravel. At this point
the two boys are arrested. Then, a classic prisoner's dilemma
interrogation is underway to try to force one to confess in
order to get a lighter sentence, but Justin's lawyer shows
up to demand that they be arrested or released. After their
release, Haywood gets nervous, telephones Sam to provide incriminating
information about Justin, asks Justin to meet at an abandoned
clubhouse in More Bay, and tries to trick him into playing
roulette with a loaded gun. The police are triumphant in the
inevitable showdown, using psychology more than muscle. Cassie
then decides to testify at her husband's parole hearing, presumably
having sublimated her anger toward him by vanquishing much
more lethal egomaniacs. MH
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