Jagged Edge (1985)

Jagged Edge, directed by Richard Marquand, is a twisted 1985 thriller that more or less fits into the erotic thriller and neo-noir genres (two genres that overlap to a very considerable extent).

What attracted me to this movie is that it was scripted by Joe Eszterhas and I happen to be a huge admirer of his work. I particularly admire the Joe Eszterhas movies that critics hated.

Jagged Edge begins with the brutal murder of the fabulously wealthy Page Forrester. The ambitious and not very ethical D.A. Tom Krasny (Peter Coyote) decides that Page Forrester’s husband Jack (Jeff Bridges) is the most likely suspect. Jack does have a plausible motive - his wife controlled the purse-strings and he now stands to inherit a vast fortune. The evidence against Jack Forrester is very thin and very circumstantial but the case will be a media circus and successfully convicting Jack Forrester would be very good indeed for Tom Krasny’s political career. Krasny orders his investigators and the cops to ignore all other possible suspects. He intends to nail Jack Forrester.

Jack’s defence attorney is Teddy Barnes (Glenn Close), a brilliant but troubled trial lawyer who gave up criminal work (she had been a spectacularly successful prosecutor) because she got sick of the wallowing in the gutter that was involved. She also quite criminal work because of what she considered to be heinously unethical conduct by D.A. Tom Krasny.

For complicated reasons she agrees to defend Jack.

Naturally Teddy (who is divorced) gets emotionally and sexually involved with her client. This may or may not start to affect her judgment.

She’s fairly convinced that Jack is innocent.

There are inevitably a lot of courtroom scenes. I have never been a fan of courtroom scenes (which tend to be overly talky) but they’re handled well.

As you would expect there are plenty of surprise witnesses and every time the case seems to be shifting in Jack’s favour it starts shifting against him. And Teddy begins to suspect that Krasny may be up to some of his old sleazy tricks.

This also sounds like pretty standard stuff but the expected plot twists are adroitly done and there are some genuinely surprising twists. And the twists just keep coming.

What makes this movie work is that it manages to keep us in doubt about Jack’s guilt or innocence right up to the end. He seems like such a nice charming likeable guy, a guy who couldn’t possibly butcher his wife, which makes us sure he’s innocent. On the other hand he is rather cocky and he does have a very smooth line with the ladies and he does handle his seduction of Teddy like an experienced seducer, which makes us think he might be guilty. He’s such an ambiguous character that we just can’t be sure.

And of course Teddy can’t be sure either. She has to consider the possibility that she is being blinded by emotion. Her judgment might also be swayed by an event in her professional past which I can’t say any more about for fear of hinting at a spoiler.

Jack is a fascinating character and Jeff Bridges does a fine job with the part.

Teddy is an interesting woman. She’s a superb lawyer but she’s under both personal and professional pressure and she’s not handling either very well. What I like most about her is that she’s not a clichéd lady super-lawyer - she has real vulnerabilities and she’s only just holding it together. She’s an actual woman, rather than a Girlpower Icon. I’ve strongly disliked Glenn Close in other movies but she’s really very good indeed here.

There’s only one very tame sex scene but this movie’s claim to being an erotic thriller rests on the possibility of a twisted sexual motive for murder. Once again this movie is nicely ambiguous - it’s not clear if the murder of Page Forrester is a sex murder or not. There’s also a hint of kinky sex.

The movie’s claims to being neo-noir are fairly strong, with the interesting twist that it might involve an innocent man being sucked into the noir nightmare world but Teddy Barnes could also be sucked into that world.

While the plots are quite different Eszterhas’s script here does share some DNA with his script for Basic Instinct. They have a slightly similar feel and tone. Which you would expect. Eszterhas was extremely pleased with Jagged Edge, and rightly so.

I certainly can’t fault Richard Marquand’s directing.

Jagged Edge did extremely well at the box office. It’s a fine thriller with complex characters and relationships and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed quite a few of the movies written by Joe Eszterhas - Sliver (1993), Basic Instinct (1992), Showgirls (1995) and Jade (1995) - and I’ve loved all of them.