Atmosphere goes a long way in The Pale Blue Eye, a 19th-century serial-killer thriller about a murder investigation at .
Bale’s focused intensity remains second to none, and he colors Landor’s edges with hints of bitterness and rage at unjust systems that only care about certain segments of their memberships. Still, as with the narrative itself, his turn never builds to anything striking; Landor carries out his professional duties with calm proficiency, and the secrets he keeps are neither difficult to deduce nor particularly noteworthy. Evocatively creepy yet less than the sum of its parts, Cooper’s latest ultimately proves to be a handsomely mounted shrug of a film.
