The movie wanders through a small range of unusual characters, following the happenings that occur to them during a two days period, as fleetingly as a feather follows it's path led by the wind. This is the factor that helps 'The Night Of The Following Day' to deliver the refreshing quality that contrasts the morbid atmosphere the movie slowly builds so perfectly.
A contradictory statement? May be... yet, since the movie has such a slow pacing, the drama that surrounds it becomes much more obvious. And suspense is drama. Suspense is conflict.
A girl is kidnapped by an odd group of professional criminals - a man whose tough ways curtail his vulnerability, his stewardess girlfriend who is struggling against a serious drug addiction, her slow minded brother, and a sadistic lunatic.
During two days, we analyze through Hubert Cornfield's almost Bergmanesque eyes, each desperate character, and how they manage to bring up the worst in each other. Their emerging weaknesses manage to sabotage the plan, as the creeping tension begins to take over the viewer.
The ending is coherent. And soon after, you'll be able to see a beautiful representation of the beauty of that human being that the world had just lost. It's not a typical 'crime does not pay' ending. It's just their doomed fate - from the moment we begin to perceive those threatening hoodlums as fragile, unreasonable human beings, we know that the plan will not work.
This is a masterpiece, in every way. Music, Cinematography, Directing, Acting, and Specially, Pacing combine themselves flawlessly in order to build an allegory of desperate souls destroying themselves when face to face with an abyss.
Not for the ones who enjoy snappy paced flicks. This is for the one willing to think a tad more, and be rewarded greatly for their effort. :)
