INTERSECTION
[Spoilers]
A film review by Jon Ridge
Copyright 1994 Jon Ridge
CAST: Richard Gere, Sharon Stone, Lolita Davidovich DIRECTOR: Mark Rydell WRITER: David Rayfiel, Marshall Brickman PRODUCER: Bud Yorkin, Mark Rydell SCORE: James Newton Howard RELEASE: January 21, 1994
If someone had told me that a movie starring Richard Gere and Sharon Stone as a married couple would be low-quality, boring, unsexy, and incongruous in every way, I'd have laughed in his face. Know what? INTERSECTION is everything I've just mentioned.
Gere stars as Vincent Eastman, a successful architect who runs a joint business with wife Sherry, played by Sharon Stone. Vincent is absolutely unhappy with his life and marriage, as he tells a friend, "We weren't a family. We were a corporation with a daughter." It's easy to see why Vincent would want to leave his wife for another woman, the sensual red-head Olivia (played by Lolita Davidovich). He's obviously very in love with his mistress; Vincent plans to build a new home for them, get married, and have children soon thereafter. A terrific beginning. A wonderful set-up.
We see Vincent driving along a slick road after a rain storm at high speed, letter in hand, smiling. What about? Without giving too much away, during the opening moments of the film, Gere's character has made an important decision regarding what he's going to do with the rest of his life. He's on his way in that direction when he slams on the brakes and plows into three different cars before tumbling his own vehicle off the side of the road.
That's the story. That and that only. What fills the remaining eighty minutes of the film is flashbacks, lots of them. We see Gere with his wife at home and in the office. We see Gere with his daughter, Gere with work associates, and Gere with his mistress. Flashbacks and flashbacks. Flashbacks intertwined and within one another. After a while it's difficult to tell whether or not anything is actually happening at the time we are watching, in the present. And it's even more difficult to give a damn. This is one hell of a free-form movie. That's fine, if that's the way you want to go with the material, so long as you weed out the unnecessary from the... well, in the case of this film... not-so unnecessary. Give it all some meaning, at least. That's what I would have done, anyway. Unfortunately I wasn't in charge of production.
I would like to say that INTERSECTION is about the memories of a dying man; the memories of him and the woman he truly loves, and why he wants to be with her and her alone. I can't say it. Even when we're sure he loves her, we aren't quite positive. I'd love to say that this movie will entertain you in some fashion, but I can't. What I can say of INTERSECTION is that it was almost a complete waste of my time. Anything else I could say would be a waste of yours.
Rated R Running time (1:38m) CRITICAL RATING: *
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