SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME
A film by Ridley Scott
A film review by Steve Upstill
Copyright 1987 Steve Upstill
In Brief: Once again Ridley Scott takes a mediocre premise and by sheer force of technique *almost* makes you buy it. Several appealing characters trapped in a movie-of-the-week. But still, it's a Ridley Scott picture.
I've developed a theory about Ridley Scott: that mediocre material has an irresistible attraction for him. I'm not quite sure whether it's the challenge of transforming lead into gold, or just that dross keeps your attention on his work. But you consistently hear, in reference to his pictures (THE DUELLISTS, ALIEN, BLADE RUNNER, LEGEND, and now SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME), how the movie itself wasn't much, but IT LOOKED SOOOOO GOOD!
He does keep getting better, though. THE DUELLISTS was primarily eye candy, but ALIEN had such compelling texture that it (for some) triumphed over its hoary old bug-eyed-monster plot. BLADE RUNNER was his only unqualified success as far as I'm concerned, simply because its future world was so complete and also because, to a large extent, the creation of a compelling world *was* the movie. LEGEND again leaned on world-fabrication, but its other elements were so vestigial that it didn't quite make it in spite of the brilliance of the odd moment and the fact that it was the most complete, satisfying fantasy world I've ever seen in a film.
And now, SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME, his first "real-world" picture, containing his first romance. The story: cop from Queens bodyguards socialite from Manhattan and gets in over his head, romantically speaking. Canonical movie-of-the-week material, right? Indeed. But then there's the part that's hard to talk about. Somehow, Ridley Scott has gone beyond look, beyond mood, beyond texture, into some other realm entirely. The images in the first twenty minutes or so of this movie are so ravishing, so self-assured, so perfectly assembled, so *right*, that they almost justify the film on their own. Unlike the perfect compositions of, say, Stanley Kubrick, they draw you in. They have an electric life of their own, and they say to you, "Come here. Let me show you something you've seen a million times in a way you've never thought possible."
Not that everything else in the film is wrong. Tom Berenger is perfectly cast as, and perfectly plays, a basically simple, hard-working, family-loving, confused but not stupid, working class cop. Both his wife and his love interest (sorry, didn't catch the names) are distinct, full-blooded people. You just wish, and wish, and wish, they these interesting, sympathetic people would jump the track of this basic, predictable copshow and go do something interesting.
Ridley Scott is a state-of-the-art filmmaker. I just wish someone would force a state-of-the-art script on him. Let's start a movement to make him direct the film of PRESUMED INNOCENT. For this one, he only gets bbb out of bbbb.
Steve Upstill
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews