DISCLOSURE
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Michael Douglas, Demi Moore, Donald Sutherland, Roma Maffia, Caroline Goodall. Screenplay: Paul Attanasio. Director: Barry Levinson.
You know that Angry White Male we've all been hearing so much about since the November election? Well, I've just figured it out: he's Michael Douglas. Ever since FATAL ATTRACTION in 1987, Douglas has seemed to be there every time a film exploded into an infuriating zeitgeist phenomenon, and Douglas himself has mastered the role of the somewhat-less-than-innocent victim. Team him up with a novel by cautionary tale king Michael Crichton, and you have DISCLOSURE. What you don't have is anything nearly as controversial as it might first appear to be. While it is well-paced and generally entertaining, it tries so hard to be everything for everyone that it misses the chance to be genuinely incendiary.
Douglas plays Tom Sanders, an executive in a Seattle computer company with a wife, two children and--he believes--great career prospects. However, on the day that he thinks he is to get a big promotion, he finds that the position has gone to Meredith Johnson (Demi Moore), an ambitious young exec who also happens to be a former lover of Tom's. He is bothered by the slight, but nowhere near as bothered as he is when an after-hours meeting with Meredith gets extremely steamy. Tom ultimately resists temptation, but Meredith is not pleased. The next morning, Tom learns that Meredith has accused him of sexual harrassment, and that the company president (Donald Sutherland) wants him to take a transfer quietly. But Tom will have none of it, and hires a media-savvy attorney (Roma Maffia) in an attempt to make the tough case that a man has been sexually harrassed by a woman.
Those familiar with other Michael Crichton works (JURASSIC PARK, RISING SUN) will not be stunned to learn that the characters in DISCLOSURE are stick figures; I somehow suspect that if Crichton could figure out a plot that didn't require human beings, he'd jump on it in a minute. A Crichton plot is a Plot with a capital "P," and DISCLOSURE is no exception. It's dense with twists, turns and intrigue, perhaps too dense for a screen adaptation ever to cover thoroughly enough. Discoveries which Tom was able to make in the novel through his own resourcefulness are reduced to conveniently (and absurdly) overheard conversations in the film. Because there is so much ground to cover, director Barry Levinson keeps the film moving like a rocket, and it could leave some viewers struggling to keep up.
Credit screenwriter Paul Attanasio (QUIZ SHOW) with making it work as well as it does. While there is very little he can do with Meredith's character, he does give Tom a slightly shadier personality so that his experience becomes something of a comeuppance. He also creates some marveous dialogue which may be DISCLOSURE's strongest asset. Donald Sutherland gets some of the choicest lines, such as dismissing the notion that Tom would accept a transfer to a division rumored to be on the chopping block: "That would be like a duck accepting a transfer to a l'orange." Comic Dennis Miller is also sharp as one of Tom's co-workers, but I suspect that many of his best lines were his own creations. Attanasio's work is efficient and clever, and it makes DISCLOSURE engaging most of the time.
Unfortunately, Attanasio also appears to have been given orders to give every possible side of the story equal time, and it is when DISCLOSURE becomes a high school debate that it becomes tiresome. Crichton's novel was unapologetic about the role-reversal in the sexual harrassment story, since to him it was simply a plot device in a corporate thriller. The film, on the other hand, both tries to be *about* sexual harrassment and to avoid appearing as reactionary as Crichton, and gives everyone a chance to make a speech. In a story as tightly constructed as DISCLOSURE, the dueling pontifications are a real time drain. DISCLOSURE is a slick, well- photographed film, and it's nice to see Levinson directing a winner after the twin bombs TOYS and JIMMY HOLLYWOOD. Still, it could have been much more effective had it spent less time chewing its nails over how politically correct it wanted to be.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 after-hours meetings: 6.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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