Customer Reviews

Final Analysis [VHS]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

WARNING: This DVD is in 1.33 aspect ration, so you won't see the same film as the one in the theater.

If you have a widescreen tv or 16:9 projection screen you'll have black bars on the left & right sides of your screen that will make this DVD look like a "TV Movie".

Visually this was a stunning film, shot by one of the greatest cinematographers - Jordan Cronenwenth who also filmed BLADERUNNER, STOP MAKING SENSE, etc. It is such a disservice to him and the film to NOT release this as an anamorphic widescreen DVD so the homeviewer can enjoy the great visuals.

WARNER Bros., we'll rather pay a little more, and get quality!

4 stars for the film, 1 star for the DVD.

If you're into mind games, this is a movie treat for you. I'm glad this dvd is out so i added it to my collection. For the price i paid for this dvd, it is worth it. In this movie, Kim Basinger played a sweet & innocent but daring role into pursuing an opportunity of getting rid of her rich husband (Eric Roberts). The object of her desire is her sister (Uma Thurman) and hunk psychologist (Richard Gere) who all three gamble for deceit and manipulation. The question is, who of the three will prevail? The movie naturally ignites with heavy drama and suspense with metaphores and their meaning. This is what Richard Gere, the psychologist, needs to figure out. I just love that part when Richard Gere entraps Kim Basinger in saying "You're right about double jeopardy". I think this is the best acting role that Kim Basinger had ever pursued over all her other movies even LA Confidential, where she won Golden globe award as best actress.

This thriller was always an extremely entertaining Hitchcock knockoff (nothing at all like Basic Instinct, despite the other reviews here) -- if you could buy Gere as a therapist, and that's not hard, since he's not playing a *smart* therapist -- but a lot of the charm of the movie was how gorgeous it was visually, and this DVD does not give you the gorgeous anarmorphic widescreen picture you expect from a DVD. It's formatted to fit your (square) screen. I would much rather have paid 20 bucks for the expected widescreen version -- since I already had the VHS, this wasn't even worth 10. (Yes, I admit I should have read the product description more carefully, but I didn't realize people were releasing widescreen movies on DVD without a widescreen option -- why should they, for crying out loud? -- so I got blindsided. I post this to warn others like myself.)

Was it two love triangles, or three? Difficult to tell in this twistathon psychological thriller that couldn't resist the tempation of ending in your customary lighthouse sequence on an inclement night with the hero hanging by his fingernails high above the lashing tides below.

Long after you've forgiven the newly discovered condition of Pathological Intoxication (one I'm convinced the director suffered from) which causes the sufferer to go berserk after so much as touching alcohol, you will recognize that the chemistry of Basinger and Gere and Therman, and permutations thereof, is great, but the plot soon puts on maillots and starts twisting like an immigrant ballerina.

Take copious notes when you watch it, which you must, if only for some excellent acting especially by Eric Roberts as a mean millionaire. You may emerge dazed or goofy, convinced that you've seen a humdinger, but you won't be able to describe it so it won't hurt all that much.

If you're into mind games, this is a movie treat for you. I'm glad this dvd is out so i added it to my collection. For the price i paid for this dvd, it is worth it. I only wish there were added features like a theatrical trailer and biographies of the actors. In this movie, Kim Basinger played a sweet & innocent but daring role into pursuing an opportunity of getting rid of her rich husband (Eric Roberts). The object of her desire is her sister (Uma Thurman) and hunk psychologist (Richard Gere) who all three gamble for deceit and manipulation. The question is, who of the three will prevail? The movie naturally ignites with heavy drama and suspense with metaphores and their meaning. This is what Richard Gere, the psychologist, needs to figure out. I just love that part when Richard Gere entraps Kim Basinger in saying "You're right about double jeopardy". I think this is the best acting role that Kim Basinger had ever pursued over all her other movies even LA Confidential, where she won Golden globe award as best actress.

This movie has some promising elements. There is a premeditated murder plot with some intricacy, twists, and atmosphere. Kim Basinger does a good job playing a beautiful mystery woman with a troubled past and an exotic, violent illness ("pathological intoxication"). She conveys soft, placid (if overly simple) beauty one minute and psychotic rage the next, and creates a character that rivals Catherine Zeta-Jones' in Traffic for turning on a dime into a memorably driven, tough, and hard-hearted soul.

Uma Thurman looks and acts her slight part adequately enough as Basinger's delicate, spaced-out sister, a patient of psychiatrist Richard Gere. Paul Guilfoyle hams it up as a boorish criminal defense lawyer pal of Gere's. A police detective is tough, crude, and menacing, on cue (barking "Don't yank" a part of his anatomy, at Gere).

But the film collapses under the weight of its many flaws. Gere is completely unconvincing as an "eminent psychiatrist." This has less to do with how he looks than how the movie presents him. At no point does he say or do anything that credibly establishes such a character. His attempts seem limited to occasionally speaking in jargon or hushed tones. He appears gullible and ignorant, as when it takes a lecture by someone else to tip him off by chance to a colorful passage in Freud's work that is key to the criminal's scheme; even one of the plotters had expected Gere to be familiar with it. His supposedly joking answer to Basinger that as a psychiatrist he simply repeats, as a question, whichever last two words are spoken by his patient -- "'Your mother?'" -- hits a little too close to home. It is a truer description of how Gere comes across here than he thinks. Nor does the film give any background that might help explain the personal vulnerability that makes him such a dupe. The character is little more than a dim, steady facial expression and a resume.

Thurman's character amounts to no more than a stagey plot gimmick. She never comes alive as a real person with a real relationship to anyone. The prosecutor is played with gruff style and no substance by Harris Yulin. He is given so little to say and do, and the character accomplishes so little, if anything, that I could not even find him listed in the credits.

Even worse is the Eric Roberts character, Basinger's intense husband with mob ties. It is a tired, superficial, trying caricature that drags the movie down to the level of countless low-budget, rip-off "romantic thrillers." The unoriginal character and portrayal recall cinematic gems like "Play Murder for Me" and "Dead On" (both with Tracy Scoggins), "Tryst" (with Barbara Carrera), and probably dozens of other "abusive husband" exploitation flicks and TV show episodes (ala "Silk Stalkings").

The weaknesses in the characters are only compounded by the weaknesses in the story. The plot flaws become so damaging and distracting that they sap entertainment value right out of the film. Watching the movie becomes like trying to drive a stick-shift down a road full of sink-holes (the film does feature a "ditch"). The abrupt, midstream shift in tone and pacing does not help.

No explanation is ever offered for how the killer was able, in real time, to "hide" the murder weapon from the police - don't they search a crime scene? don't they have search warrants for other hiding places? And this is a plot point that drives most of the movie.

We are supposed to believe that the prosecutor would proceed with a first degree murder trial not only without a murder weapon but without establishing the accused's motive, not even bothering to investigate until afterward exactly who was in line to receive a $4 million payout.

We are supposed to believe that Gere can install himself on the psychiatric board responsible for evaluating the fitness for release from an institution of his own, indefinitely confined lover.

We are supposed to believe -- and cheer -- that two outside professionals would arrive for an interview without introducing themselves or their reason for being there, and that another character would suddenly switch a lifelong allegiance, all so that Gere can stage an elaborate trick on someone he later acknowledges is mentally ill from childhood abuse, only apparently to arrange an even more haphazard, convoluted, and contrived manipulation later by behaving cavalierly and roughly to a patient.

We are supposed to believe that murderers can walk out of mental institutions simply by switching clothes with someone else in a bathroom.

We are supposed to believe that Gere would enlist a psychiatric patient to steal for him, without giving any warnings or taking any precautions to protect the young man from the vicious homocidal maniac with whom this puts him at odds (to compensate for this colossal error, the movie prematurely discloses the man's fate, creating a witness and another potential crime to prosecute and thus undercutting the suspense of whether the killer of the earlier victim will escape unpunished).

We are supposed to believe, for the sake of a quick, shock-effect touch at the end, that, after two court trials had thoroughly publicized the events of the case, a character at the heart of the case would appear to be recycling the exact same modus operandi for future use. And so on.

The movie suffers badly under the relentless battering of these accumulated character and plot problems. Simply dismissing them, as some reviews do with an air of glib pseudo-sophistication, all-knowing cynicism, empty flippancy, or lazy, unintelligent flicking of the "not helpful" button on any review honest enough to point them out is not a serious response. Nor do they simply disappear because the movie inserts some attractive visuals, such as of bridges and lighthouses, or ramps up dramatic music (somewhat frantically and mechanically, starting about halfway through). Any meaningful review has to come to terms not only with the elements of the movie that are promising and likable but with the substantial flaws that prevent it from being satisfying.

With this truly awful movie, the challenge is figuring out just why. How can a movie with such a promising, suspenseful start become laugh-out-loud, unintentionally, funny?

Every movie must create and inhabit a consistent universe. That universe could have a day-to-day, this is really happening quality. Like your typical Alfred Hitchcock movie. Or, that universe could be more fanciful, with improbable cliffhanger events. Like your typical Arnold Schwartzenager or Harrison Ford movie. When you try to switch from one to the other in midstream, you get that unintentionally funny quality.

The movie begins with a realistic psychiatrist/patient relationship between Richard Gere and Ulma Thurman. The focus quickly shifts to a psychiatrist/patient's sister relationship (Kim Bassinger). That's a little strain on the credibility meter. Falling in love with a patient's sister? Not generally a good idea, but we'll give the story the benefit of the doubt.

Halfway through, we get the Hitchockian twist. Things are not really as they seem. I was caught off guard. Impressive so far. But the credibility meter is getting a little strained. Didn't anyone see Richard and Kim hanging out together on, say, the night of the crime? Didn't anyone realize the accused woman's sister was in therapy with Mr. Gere? Wouldn't that have been relevant for the trial?

Ah, but we're only a bit over an hour into the movie. More time to kill. Time to drag our poor psychiatrist into a Schartzenager/Ford universe. Frame him with some ridiculous barbel nonsense that he could easily dispense with by. . . surprise . . . telling the truth! No, that would be too simple. Let's throw in an improbable escape from the mental institution, an even more improbable rendevouz with the clever cop and the escapee at a dock and lighthouse, and a few life-and-death close calls at said lighthouse. Let's turn Richard from a psychiatrist into an action hero, and Kim from an abused wife into a clever schemer and gun-wielding gangster to boot. Give everyone the best of both worlds. While we're at it, let's make Alfred Hitchock roll over in his grave by shamelessly copying his tricks?

Shifting from one universe to another in midstream. That's what humor is all about.

I really enjoyed this movie. Suspense, many twists and turns and I have to say that Kim Basinger was awesome. I also thought Eric Roberts did an incredible job in the short time he appeared in the movie. If you like suspense and some surprises, you will enjoy it.

Was very pleased with this purchase. It was received in a short time after ordered and I was very happy with the service I received.

Bad movie. Lame, over-the-top, cliched, dull, one-dimensional characters, formulatic Hollywood ending. I have nothing against Richard Gere nor Kim Basinger. The acting is fine. What makes this movie so bad is the script, direction and story. And oh yeah, the DVD stinks too; horrid transfer, bare-bones with zero bonus material. A bootlegged video would offer better picture and sound quality than this.

But as much as I've bashed this movie, I recommend getting it, for the sole reason of a very young (and oh my lawd, ever so sexy and gorgeous) Uma Thurman. She will make your saliva glands work a double shift. Uma is THE reason for owning this movie. Fast-forward to every scene with her and you're all set. Forget the rest.

My final analysis of Final Analysis: no stars for actual movie, 2 stars for Uma Thurman (one star for Uma and another star for Thurman). Enough said.