THE LAST SEDUCTION
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Even without a good story, this film would
be fascinating if only for the characterization of
Bridget Gregory. Linda Fiorentino plays a
brilliant, calculating, manipulative woman. Steve
Barancik has written a taut, steamy murder thriller
that has already played on cable and is now getting
only a tiny theatrical release. THE LAST SEDUCTION
is worth seeking out. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4)
Last year RED ROCK WEST, directed by John Dahl, went directly to video, then got a small theatrical release based on very good word of mouth. It fact, it was a nice little thriller that deserved much better treatment. That was unfortunate. But when Dahl's THE LAST SEDUCTION got the same treatment this year it was nearly criminal. I am sorry I missed it on HBO, but it was worth paying to see in a theater. This steamy crime thriller with tight and fascinating script by Steve Barancik is far better than the average run of theatrical films.
Bridget Gregory (played by Linda Fiorentino) is as cold and calculating a woman as has ever has been shown on the screen. She is as quick-thinking and amoral as a computer. Gregory instantly sizes up situations and subtly manipulates people and events to her own advantage. She works for insurance companies as a "lead generator," someone who is able to find potential customers for her company. And she must be good at her job based on the sampling we see. Just as a demonstration of her abilities she takes a credit history database and in a chillingly logical manner generates a list of women who would be anxious to have their husbands murdered. The method makes sufficient sense that one almost worries that some viewer will copy the method in real life. This is a female Hannibal Lecter whose fixation is making money rather than on cannibalism and mutilation, And because her desires are so normal, she is much harder to catch.
As the film opens Bridget does her thing for a New York City insurance company while her physician husband, Clay (Bill Pullman) pulls off a dangerous but lucrative drug deal that Bridget has master- minded. Hubby comes home with lots of cash, only to have his loving wife take the money and run. She is headed to Chicago, but to avoid thugs hired by her husband, she lays low in Beston, a suburb of Buffalo. She picks up one of the locals, Mike Swale (Peter Berg) as a bedmate to use with approximately the same consideration she would give a vibrator. Under Dahl's direction the sex scenes are often explicit and erotic. Some of the violence scenes are also fairly graphic.
Fiorentino plays Bridget like a breed of spider. She is purely cold and calculating, the epitome of sang froid. Peter Berg seems sufficiently young and naive to fall into her web. And Bill Pullman, who was pushed around by the woman in his life in RUTHLESS PEOPLE, here plays someone a lot smarter but still totally out-classed. J. T. Walsh, who has becoming a very familiar screen heavy, plays a crooked lawyer who can only look on with envy at what Bridget can do.
Fiorentino makes this film as exciting a thriller as we have seen this year. This is film noir with a vengeance with a femme fatale who could give lessons to Stanwick in DOUBLE INDEMNITY and Turner in BODY HEAT. Watch for it. I give this film a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
.
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