This is very much a movie intended to be about class.
Detective Mike Keegan (Tom Berenger) is newly assigned to the Homicide Squad, in fact he’s newly assigned to the Detective Bureau. He lives in a cruddy house in a bad part of Queens, with his wife and kid. They’re far from rich but it’s a happy marriage.
Claire Gregory (Mimi Rogers) is a super-rich Manhattan high society type. She lives in a luxury apartment in Manhattan. Luxury is a pitifully inadequate word to describe it - she lives like royalty. She lives like a princess.
One of her super-rich friends was murdered by big-time gangster Joey Venza (Andreas Katsulas). Claire witnessed the murder. She’s not just the State’s key witness; she’s their only witness. And she’s the one whose evidence could send Venza to the big house for a long stretch.
The cops have to keep Claire safe but at the same time they cannot let her know how much danger she’s in. She might get cold feet about testifying. So they lie to her and tell her there’s no real danger.
Claire and Mike are from different universes. Claire can spend the equivalent of a years’ salary for Mike on one dress. They’re like aliens to each other.
Mike is inexperienced and to be honest he’s not a very good cop. He makes a rookie mistake early on making an arrest. This is his first case as a detective and he’s already being hopelessly unprofessional, getting personally involved with a material witness in a murder case. He’s in way over his head.
Of course Claire and Mike sleep together, of course his wife finds out and of course his career at risk.
This is TV-movie stuff, both in terms of plot and visuals. Competently shot but there’s nothing here to dazzle. It looks like a well-made TV-movie.
So what about the class angle? It’s there but it’s handled in an uninteresting trite way. OK, it’s tough for a working-class stuff and a wealthy socialite if they fall in love. Now that’s an earth-shattering revelation.
The big problem is the two leads. Tom Berenger is boring. He has zero charisma. He has the emotional range of a coffee table.
There is no way a rich society dame is going to fall for a guy like this unless he exudes huge amounts of masculine sexual electricity. This guy is about as exciting as a librarian. She already has a rich passive whiney boyfriend. Why would she dump him for a poor passive whiney boyfriend?
Mimi Rogers is also a problem. A married man is not going to be tempted to go after a woman way outside his league unless she’s sexy and glamorous and exciting. Claire is none of these things. It might have helped had she been put in glamorous slinky dresses, but she dresses like a teacher at an up-market community college.
There is zero sexual chemistry between the two leads. And zero passion and zero romantic chemistry. When they kiss for the first time we’re surprised, since they’ve given no indication of being the slightest bit attracted to each other. We just don’t buy the idea that they have become sexually and romantically obsessed with each other.
It’s also not a neo-noir since Claire is way too bland to qualify as a femme fatale. She fails to give off any femme fatale vibes.
It’s the casting that sinks this movie. With someone like Richard Gere or, even better, Kurt Russell, it might have worked. We could imagine a rich society dame going weak at the knees for Kurt Russell as a tough masculine working-class cop. And as the female lead, maybe Kim Basinger or Sharon Stone (not yet a major star but she’d had a couple of leading roles by this time). A man might sacrifice everything for a woman like Basinger or Stone.
I really can’t recommend Someone to Watch Over Me to anyone but a Ridley Scott completist.
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