By BRUCE DENNILL
Closed Circuit (16L) and Hidden Valley Sauvignon Blanc 2014
Like the wine, the suspense “thriller” Closed Circuit is slightly heavy and cloying. In the case of the wine it may be that the tinge of apple is of an apple just past its prime, or midway through becoming a dessert wine.
The sauvignon blanc and the DVD share another facet: a label that doesn’t give a hell of a lot away. This is straight-off odd in the world of wine where the combination of the shape of the bottle and the graphic impact of the label are incredibly important marketing tools, given that the vast majority of wine drinkers can’t tell their merlot from their malbec and stop at a certain spot in their local liquor stores based the visual cues leaping out at them from the shelves.
It’s no less strange when trying to sell a movie. Which is short for “moving picture”. You know, kinetic; energetic; with pictures. Instead, the Closed Circuit team went for plain black with large red lettering and the faces of the piece’s two stars, Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall, looking … bored.
This is not surprising, actually, because the script they’re given takes the threat of terrorism – topical and terrifying – and makes it a claustrophobic drama about a couple of lawyers who have a romantic history and are now thrown together in a professional capacity, in a case where evidence they have to work with is protected by some murky set of government-level regulations.
The taste of the wine is not as complex as that plot, though, though it does take just as long to cause any sort of excitement. Actually, that’s not entirely true: the film starts to seem worthwhile after an hour, while the best part of the wine is the aftertaste (not a throwaway insult – it’s a lovely aftertaste).
A sensible pairing? Certainly. A great night in? Not at all.