Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36795 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-06-05
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: DTS Surround Sound, PAL, Digital Sound, Subtitled, Dolby
• Original language: English, German, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 123 minutes

Customer Reviews

"Everyone that she plays with dies."
In Joe Esterhaus' $3m script, Glenn Close is the lawyer defending and falling in love with possible serial killer Jeff Bridges - whoops, wrong Joe Esterhaus script. Debra Winger is the FBI agent who falls in love with possible neo-Nazi murderer Tom Berenger - wrong one again. Jessica Lange is the lawyer defending her possible Nazi war criminal father - done it again. Michael Douglas is the cop investigating the flagrante delicto murder of a rock star who falls for possible serial killer and definite bi-sexual Sharon Stone. That kind of imagination is worth $3m of anyone's money any day.

Thankfully there's rather more to the film that the bonking-and-slashing of the marketing pitch, even if most of it is cosmetic. The interrogation scene is already part of film-lore, but perhaps more interesting is its mirror image later in the film where Douglas finds himself inadvertently quoting her line of defence. Indeed, many of the scenes in the film are deliberately replayed in a different context, the only aspect of genuine originality in Esterhaus' script - he knows when she passes a lie detector test she is guilty because he has passed one as well after accidentally shooting a tourist who got into the line of fire while high on cocaine.

Although his most conventional film, Verhoeven's interest in the duality of his characters so evident in Total Recall and Robocop manages to make rather more of the film than it perhaps deserves, but at the end of the day it's basically just a glossy package that pushes most of the right commercial buttons. The sex scenes in particular are surprisingly explicit for a mainstream movie and, unlike the teasing style of the Zalman King efforts of the same period, feature long shots and long takes, with no apparent body doubling.

Douglas still doesn't convince as a sex-symbol, whether he's wearing a pretty outrageous v-kneck at a club or waddling away naked from the bathroom, but, despite strong competition from the generally overlooked Tripplehorn as Douglas' psychiatrist/on-off lover (and another possible suspect) it's really Stone's show all the way. It may not be the stuff of Oscars but there's no doubt that she knows what she's about, manipulating the audience as effectively as her character does Douglas on screen.

Momentum's DVD boasts a good 2.35:1 widescreen transfer that makes the most of Verhoeven's fairly good use of the Scope frame and Jan De Bont's excellent photography and a good selection of extras.

Business as Usual
One of the greatest of thrillers, this film throws it all overboard for a 'shock' ending. After two hours of mounting tension based firmly on an 'innocent but complex' character reading of the two main characters, the ending reveals that the villain was guilty after all. The psycho killer made fools of us as well as of the cop. It's really been two hours of the swamp monster kills again straight out of z grade movie history and as boring as could be. To compromise your audience like this is, hey, maybe avant garde, guying the thriller conventions and audiences' implicit sadism in watching this kind of stuff. But the film made a lot of money, so I guess the film maker is just showing contempt for his audience after all. Roll up, roll up, and be exploited.And it could have been so good.

I can only too well imagine why this film is popular
Before Footballer's Wives and other such glorified glossy trash entertainment, in the early ninties, you had to make do with this steamy 'thriller', from the man who regretfully brought us Showgirls, Paul Verhoeven.
The film stars Sharon stone in the now iconic leg crossing moment and the exaggerated sex scenes, which are impossibly funny and Michael Douglas's performance as debauched cop, Nick, proves he really has no real acting talent.
A ludicrous and trademark camp plot, with gratuitous sex scenes alongside dated nineties nostalgia, watch it if you really want to see what the hype is, now with the sequal awaiting in cinemas in 2006.
Although, should you remember the moral outcry it caused on its release, and the issue of censorship it generated, i would not bother. This is a film that does not try to disguise its plot line is as weak as milky tea- a bisexual writer (Stone) murders a man with an ice pick that she details in her novel, whilst hard living cop, Nick (Douglas) is convinced of her guilt, but cannot stop falling to her oozing seduction techniques. Quelle suprise.
It receives three stars as it is not all bad. Stone is the quintessential femme fatale, as Katherine Tramell, in a film that lacks sophistication but sure is laced with enough sex to keep bums on seats.