'The Pale Blue Eye' movie review: Christian Bale, Harry Melling are top-notch in this atmospheric mystery

'The Pale Blue Eye' movie review: It's 1830s America. The corpse of a cadet at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York has been found hanged, and later at the mortuary its heart is ripped out with the precision of a surgeon. The military summons Christian Bale's veteran detective Augustus Landor to solve the crime. Also at the academy as a cadet is Harry Melling's young Edgar Allan Poe—the future literary maven. His way with words may come in handy with the mysterious half-torn note found clutched in the hands of the cadet. And before you ask, no, all this is fiction, and the events of this film did not happen.

This story fictionalises Poe's actual years as a cadet. Though a dreamy-eyed individual, the lad appears to be intelligent and perceptive and becomes an unofficial, clandestine Dr Watson to Landor's Sherlock. Soon enough, another cadet is found brutally murdered in the nearby woods, his heart too carved out from his chest—though, this time the procedure appears cruder.

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Not only are murders tragic enough on their own for the community, the act of the said blood-pumping organs being ripped out hints at arcane, Satanic occult rituals. It may not be just a murderer with quotidian motives like greed or jealousy, but perhaps something much darker, like an occultist sacrificing cadets to Satan for some nefarious, un-Christian purpose. Unless somebody has a desperate case of heart fetish, that is.

It's a classic setup. A world-weary, brooding detective is called in to solve a case that confounds him like no other. The setting iscosyin a wintry way, withsnow-blanketed environs. Japanese cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi manages to evoke a stunning sense of place. In such mysteries, the elements are one of the characters, and Cooper and Takayanagi recognise that.

The only out-there thing about it is Poe himself. Brilliantly cast (and styled, the hair is exactly right), the wide-eyed, awkward, and earnest Poe may have secrets of his own pertaining to the murders. And those secrets create a rift between Landor and Poe. Will Poe end up being the one Landor is searching for?

I cannot in good conscience say that it wasn't nice to see Melling portraying Poe, but apart from a couple of Easter eggs related to the author's works, it could have been any young man with a literary bent. It wouldn't have changed naught else in the story.

That said, he does play off brilliantly well against each other, Poe and Landor. While one is a romantic, the other is hard-edged and cynical. One cannot get enough books, the other wants to have nothing to do with them. Even in the murders, the interpretation of the heart being ripped out is taken to be by Poe as an act of romance, a twisted kind of love, which amuses Landor. The performances by Bale and Melling are excellent, particularly the latter, who delivers the best work of his career. I would watch the hell out of a buddy movie or even series involving these two actors playing these very characters, solving crimes across the United States.

The mystery's resolution appears predictable until you find out half an hour is still to go and the movie reveals a twist teased throughout the movie. From the very first still, even. It's smart and well done and features one of the best one-on-one scenes I've had the pleasure to watch in a while. Well-written and acted. Toby Jones, Timothy Spall, and Gillian Anderson also appear in supporting but solid roles.

Love mysteries and do not mind a bit of occult thrown in? 'The Pale Blue Eye' is for you.