SHATTERED IMAGE A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 1998 David N. Butterworth
no stars (out of ****)
She was the femme in "La Femme Nikita." He was the Baldwin in "Backdraft," "Sliver," and "Fair Game" (with Cindy Crawford). Together, Anne Parillaud and William Baldwin conspire to make "Shattered Image" the biggest piece of hooey since the Stallone/Stone "thriller" "The Specialist."
The film poses the question "what if the life you're living now is really a dream, and your dreams reality?" It's either about a woman who's haunted by a recurring (and recurring and recurring) nightmare that she's a hired assassin, or it's about a hired assassin who's haunted by a recurring (and recurring and recurring) nightmare that she's honeymooning with William Baldwin in Jamaica.
It doesn't much matter and believe me by the time "Shattered Image" runs its painful and pedestrian course you won't care.
These two lives, with Parillaud looking like Siouxsie Sioux with a black wig, black emotionless eyes, and black leather clothing in the Seattle-based assassin scenes, and moping around like Karen Carpenter in the Jamaica scenes, play out endlessly throughout the film and the result is it's now *twice* as boring as it might have been.
It's not that complicated plots can't be entertaining. Of course it helps if you have interesting characters, crisp dialogue, and a modicum of style. "Shattered Image" isn't complex, it's just stupid. And boring. Parillaud and Baldwin, who aren't exactly Shakespearean material to begin with, are saddled with such leaden dialogue that their characters have zero chance of breaking free of their cardboard confines. Lines like:
"You don't beg, you insist. I like that in a woman." That's Parillaud's character talking ... to her cat! And:
"You're not the reason I couldn't care less about you." Huh? And this wonderful bathroom interchange early in the film:
"If you give me a couple of minutes you know I'll charm the pants
off you."
"I don't have that kind of time."
Talking of pants, Parillaud has her clothes off faster than you can say "Point of No Return." We have come to expect this from Billy Baldwin, but it might have been nice to have learned something about their characters first. But there's nothing to learn. Karen is as interesting as a cereal box, a someone's-out-to-get-me crybaby who imagines the voice at the other end of the phone, the stranger who sends her flowers, maybe even her husband himself, is her would-be killer. Siouxsie is the chromium cool, tough-as-nails crack killing machine who shoots out a couple of mirrors in order to justify the film's meaningless stock title.
Baldwin seems more interested in Parillaud's nest egg (so that he can pave paradise and put up a parking lot) than he does in her. Each time Graham Greene shows up he gets killed. Barbet Schroeder ("Reversal of Fortune") co-produced and should be ashamed of himself.
Every now and again it's fun to watch a really bad movie. And every now and again, as "Shattered Image" makes agonizingly clear, it isn't.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@mail.med.upenn.edu
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