SLIVER
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 1993 David N. Butterworth/The Summer Pennsylvanian
The first problem with SLIVER is its title. Sliver. What, like a sliver of glass? Or maybe it's like slaver (as in saliva). Or maybe it's just a typo (silver, slither, livers?). And why is the "L" italicized in the print ads like that, anyway?
Ah, but wait!
The title is a reference to New York's upscale Sliver Building from which, at the film's outset, a striking blonde--who Just So Happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to Sharon Stone--steps out for some fresh air.
Too bad she was on the twentieth floor.
It's an opening that screams "flashback," but wait! That's not Sharon Stone after all. It's just someone who looks like her. Maybe there's more to this movie than meets the eye. Too bad. There isn't.
Stone plays book editor Carly Norris, who moves into the same fashionable East Side apartment from which her hapless lookalike took that fatal plunge. Faster than you can say "character exposition," here's Stone, straight-haired, serious and stylish, coming to grips with a failed marriage. Stone's Norris takes liberties with the term schizophrenic; she's hip (preferring Pearl Jam to Pavarotti), she's insecure, she's tough. She's a self-confessed putz, mousy one minute, vavavoomish the next. And, as we'll soon find out, she's not the kind of woman who minds getting her hair mussed.
Within minutes of moving in, she's hit on in the lobby by icy computer geek Zeke Hawkins (William Baldwin, he of the piercing stare). Zeke offers to carry her packages for her. Of all the characters in this film, Baldwin's has the most depth. He's kinda likable ... in a dopey, grinning, psychopathic kind of way.
Tom Berenger plays washed-up writer Jack Landsford, who's introduced to Norris by her boss (the serviceable Martin Landau). Landsford wants to know all her secrets. Norris doesn't appear to be on the make, but every time a man makes a pass at her in this movie, she's making dinner reservations. But she pays the price in a restaurant strip poker scene with Hawkins that's particularly embarrassing.
Stone may try her best, but she doesn't have much to work with. This is surprising considering novelist Ira Levin's reputation for clever, complex thrillers. Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, who penned Stone's last film, the notorious BASIC INSTINCT, doesn't add much to the puzzle with his paper-thin adaptation. For all its bestseller status, SLIVER's plot leaves more than a few loose ends hanging around, and whatever happened to suspense? This is the kind of movie in which tension is created by characters never finishing their sentences. "You were there when she...?," etc.
Polly Walker (star of last year's ENCHANTED APRIL) plays Norris' fast-talking neighbor Vida Warren. Imagine Tracey Ullman playing Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and you'll understand what a change of pace this is for the versatile British actress. It's a pity she's given so little screen time.
So, do we get to see Sharon in the buff? You bet. Her early bathtub masturbation scene is an obligatory, stylized mishmash that plays like an outtake from a Madonna video. Stone and Baldwin go at it a couple of times it's true, but because there's no real chemistry between the two stars (Berenger plays it safe and keeps his pants on), there are few sexual fireworks here. And this from a film that bills itself as a kinetically-charged piece of eroticism.
SLIVER's best scene is an accidental encounter between Carly Norris and two unwilling and unknowing participants in her recent initiation into high-tech voyeurism. Stone's nonverbal display of discomfort is about the only subtle touch in the film. The impact of that scene is heightened by its proximity to Sharon's earlier Big Montage of Human Emotions. Here she watches--and (over) reacts to--the private images on the closed circuit television screens: the funny, the sad, the sexy, the frightening, Real Life for the MTV generation, 52 channels and everything on.
There's a lot of talent behind this film--aforementioned writer Eszterhas, cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (with additional photography by Lazslo Kovacs), director Phillip (PATRIOT GAMES) Noyce--but somehow it doesn't show on the screen. If you *really* like to watch, try renting PEEPING TOM, Michael Powell's 1960 classic of sex, violence and voyeurism. It's everything SLIVER tries to be, and more so.
Silly title aside, SLIVER does have, at its best, one of the most unconventional endings in recent memory. At its worst, it's just not very interesting.
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