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One of the biggest teases in film history, this film's sensational plot finds a young wife (Demi Moore) solicited for sex by a wealthy bachelor (Robert Redford), for which the latter offers to pay a cool million bucks to her and her underachieving husband (Woody Harrelson). The two accept Redford's deal, and their marriage is ruined. The twist in the film, though, is that the sin doesn't lie with the rich guy, but rather with this unfocused, immature, equivocating couple who would do such a thing, naively believing it would get their lives on track. Director Adrian Lyne, who caused an even greater stir by filming
Lolita (the one starring Jeremy Irons), thus pulls a kind of thinking person's bait and switch, promising something tawdry and then turning the story around so its focus is on a rite of passage for the estranged spouses. Still, Lyne has some peculiarly garish ideas at times: the final disposition of that million dollars is like a joke out of Monty Python.
--Tom Keogh
The first and last scenes of this movie vaguely remind you of an old Claude Lelouch weepie-lovers looking wretched in a picturesque fog. Nothing in between is much clearer; this is a humorless, muddle-headed slog through familiar territory. David and Diana Murphy (Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore) are a young married couple, desperate for money, who vainly try their luck at the tables of Las Vegas. Enter John Gage (Robert Redford), who is so smitten by Diana that he offers her a million dollars for one night of love. That's the dilemma, but it never grips you; the director, Adrian Lyne, is bored by anything that smacks of moral complication, preferring to show us what a juicy, unflustered life you can enjoy with that kind of cash. The movie is hardly in a position to chastise Gage for his empty soul when its own style is one of numbing, desolate slickness. None of the performers is given a chance-Harrelson, previously so good in "White Men Can't Jump," looks embarrassed just to be here. And if it's sex you've come to see, don't bother: most of it was already in the trailer. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker