The Hot Spot (1990)

The Hot Spot is a very very interesting 1990 neo-noir erotic thriller directed by Dennis Hopper.

It starts like a western. Harry Madox (Don Johnson) is the mysterious stranger who rides into town, except that it’s the 90s so he drives. Landers, Texas is a small town that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a western.

Harry talks himself into a job as a car salesman at George Harshaw’s car yard. We have no idea if he’s a decent guy who’s going to land himself in trouble or a bad dude looking for trouble. He doesn’t give much away. He is rather interested in the local bank.

He’s going to get involved with two women either one of whom could turn out to be a femme fatale. The first is Harshaw’s secretary Gloria Harper (Jennifer Connelly). She’s as cute as a button and seems like she’s as wholesome as freshly baked bread. Then Harry accompanies her on a repo job. The car to be repossessed belongs to Sutton (William Sadler) and he comes across as a violent sleazy alcoholic loser. But Gloria behaves very very strangely indeed. And Gloria has a tendency to be jumpy and secretive.

Gloria has a secret. She’s obviously a Good Girl, but probably a Good Girl in Trouble. If a man has any sense he runs the other way at this point. But since when do men behave sensibly about sweet gorgeous girls? Harry’s reaction is the obvious one. He can save her. He can fix her. And this is Noir World so we know Harry’s a goner.

Then he meets Dolly Harshaw (Virginia Madsen). She’s the boss’s wife. The boss’s much younger wife. Harry isn’t totally stupid. He knows you don’t get mixed up with the boss’s wife. But what Dolly wants Dolly gets and she obviously wants Harry. And when it comes to sexy blondes Harry isn’t all that sensible. I mean, she’s making it obvious that she’s there for the taking and what is he supposed to do? He figures it’s just one roll in the hay and that can’t lead to any trouble. One of Harry’s problems is that he’s a bit too confident of his ability to avoid getting entangled in personal dramas.

We soon learn more about Harry’s interest in banking. 

And Harry discovers that he’s well and truly entangled with both these women. Gloria’s secret gradually comes to light and it’s a huge mess that no sane person would want anything to do with but by this time poor Harry has fallen in love with her. 

And Dolly wants more than bedroom shenanigans. She has a plan. Harry wants no part of it but by now Dolly has a hold over him (connected to his interest in banking). 

Bad girls are dangerous and good girls are just as dangerous when they need rescuing. And we’re in Noir World. Who can tell for sure which are the bad girls and which are the good girls?

You can see the kind of nightmare that is waiting just around the corner for Harry and the nightmare does indeed eventuate. A man who likes to be totally in control finds that everything is now totally out of control. 

We can see various obvious ways this could end but the ending we get has a neat double twist and it’s both unexpected and completely satisfying.

Perversity is something we expect in neo-noir and there is some and it comes as a surprise. There’s a fair bit of nudity and sex - this is both neo-noir and erotic thriller and the plot is largely driven by lust and Hopper is quite rightly in prepared to make sure the movie has the required erotic heat. 

Don Johnson is extraordinarily good. He’s charismatic and he nails the contradictions in Harry’s personality - he’s a scoundrel but then he suddenly does something noble and Johnson makes both sides of Harry’s character believable.

Virginia Madsen is clearly having insane amounts of fun doing the full-on femme fatale thing. She’s a joy to watch.

Jennifer Connelly has the toughest part because Gloria is simply swept along by events and she’s a character offering no opportunities for an Oscar-bait performance. But Connelly does a fine job.

There’s a genuine noir atmosphere, a great plot, excellent performances and it’s a visually impressive movie making good use of the Texas setting. A fine directing effort by Dennis Hopper. A top-tier neo-noir. Very highly recommended.

And it looks great on Blu-Ray.

Black Widow (1987)

Black Widow is a 1987 neo-noir and it probably really is a neo-noir if you define neo-noir fairly loosely.

Debra Winger is Alexandra and she’s a Fed. She’s become intrigued by two cases of older very rich men with much younger wives. The two men both died suddenly apparently from a very very rare medical condition. It’s a real medical condition but its rarity makes the coincidence seem just a little odd. The autopsies offer no indications of foul play.

It strikes Alexandra that the two wives looked rather similar. In fact, very similar.

Then another older very rich man with a much younger wife dies suddenly. There are various other odd similarities between all three cases.

Alexandra is convinced that the three wives are all the same woman and that she has now murdered three husbands. Her superior officer thinks she’s go a bee in her bonnet about nothing. The three men appeared to have died of natural causes. Alexandra has zero evidence to back up her hunch.

The audience knows that Alexandra is right. It’s the same woman, played by Theresa Russell. Her real identity is elusive. Her name might be Catherine. For the sake of convenience I’ll refer to her as Catherine.

Alexandra pursues the case obsessively.

At first it’s a hunt. Finding the mystery woman isn’t particularly difficult. She’s now in Hawaii. Alexandra does after all have all the resources of the Justice department behind her. But finding the woman doesn’t help. There is still no actual evidence. It now becomes a cat-and-mouse game. Alexandra is the cat, Catherine is the mouse. It is of course possible that the mouse has teeth, and in such cases it can become unclear as to who is hunting whom.

One criticism levelled at this movie is that the audience knows too much too early but that’s standard suspense movie technique. This is a case where the detective also knows a great deal early on. But knowing the identity of the killer is irrelevant. Alexandra has to find proof. The interest in this movie is provided by the battle of wits between Alexandra and Catherine. Catherine is a very very clever murderess. But Alexandra is a very good very determined cop.

The other major point of interest is motivation. The first murder made Catherine a very rich woman. She has more money than she could spend in a dozen lifetimes. But she keeps killing. Alexandra would like to know why.

In Hawaii some major plot twists kick in and naturally I’m not going to give any hints about them.

There are some interesting supporting players. Nicol Williamson and Dennis Hopper are very good but the only characters who matter are the two women. Debra Winger is excellent but this movie belongs to Theresa Russell. She has the more showy more ambiguous more mysterious and more interesting role and she makes the most of it.

She is very sexy in a very classy way. And she’s fascinating and charming. It’s not difficult to see how Catherine has no trouble acquiring husbands.

In my view in a story such as this it’s a mistake to over-explain things. That’s the mistake Hitchcock made in Psycho. It ended up making Norman Bates less interesting and less scary. When we’re offered detailed diagnoses they always come across as unconvincing and contrived. We already had enough clues to form our own conclusions about Norman.

Black Widow does not make that mistake. Catherine might be motivated by greed but there might be something else. On several occasions she reacts in very odd ways, offering tantalising suggestions that she’s more complicated than she appears to be. There are a number of possible motivations. It could be over-compensation for something. It could be sexual. It could be feminine competition. We get vague hints, which allows us to amuse ourselves by speculating on the basis of those shadowy hints.

What really allows Theresa Russell to display her acting chops to the full is that she is playing the role of a woman who is herself playing various roles. To snare each husband she must adopt a different persona. We cannot be sure that we ever see the real Catherine. Maybe there no longer is a real Catherine.

To make things even more interesting, Alexandra has gone undercover. So she is playing a part as well. There are so many layers of ambiguity and role-playing in this movie and it’s possible that both women have become captives of the roles they’re playing. And the dynamic between these two women is fiendishly complex and Ron Bass’s screenplay avoids the more obvious pitfalls.

What’s even better is that Catherine displays occasional signs of vulnerability and she doesn’t seem as emotionally blank as you might expect from a ruthless murderess. When Catherine cries we almost believe that her emotion is real. And it’s possible that she almost believes it herself. Maybe it is real. Maybe there is real pain there. The fact that we don’t get a detailed diagnosis makes this the most interesting aspect to the film. She’s femme fatale but a complicated one.

The part is a gift for a great actress and Theresa Russell is a great actress and she’s at the top of her game here.

Another strength of the movie is that Alexandra is not one of those female characters who could just as easily have been male. She is obsessed by this case because she knows that this is a killer that only a woman can catch, because only a woman knows what another woman is capable of.

Black Widow is a superb thriller. Very highly recommended.

Internal Affairs (1990)

Internal Affairs is a 1990 neo-noir which had enormous potential but suffers from some flaws and some clumsy writing.

Raymond Avilla (Andy Garcia) is a cop who has just been assigned to IAD (Internal Affairs). He’s going to be partnered with Amy Wallace (Laurie Metcalf). They’re investigating an officer, Van Stretch (William Baldwin), who is clearly an out-of-control coke addict.

The two IAD cops begin to suspect that the cop they should be investigating is Dennis Peck (Richard Gere). He seems to be the spider at the centre of a web of corruption.

Usually a cop under investigation by IAD has the odds stacked against him but Peck is not only crooked he’s also smart and ruthless. And Raymond Avilla is as dumb as a rock.

Avilla and Wallace have plenty of evidence against Stretch but what they want is for him to testify against Peck in return for immunity. Stretch won’t do it.

Their case is going nowhere which seems strange since they have a mountain of evidence against Peck and that’s one of the movie’s implausibilities.

The IAD cops slowly become aware that Peck may be involved in murder as well as corruption. There’s a link to Steven and Tova Arrocas and a hit that he may have organised for them.

There are plot twists which rely heavily on Avilla’s stupidity - his inability to predict that Peck’s actions even when it’s obvious what he is likely to do.

There’s not just a battle of wills but a battle of nerves between Avilla and Peck. Peck has the edge because he’s a whole lot smarter.

The IAD cops hope to get useful information from Stretch’s wife and her refusal to co-operate is another case of the IAD cops missing something very obvious.

Peck is playing mind games with Avilla, trying to convince Avilla that his wife is being unfaithful.

This is one of those cop thrillers in which the cop hero’s family gets caught up in the action.

The problem is come crude ideological messaging. Every male character is either evil or stupid. The straight female characters are all helpless victims of Evil Men. The only good person in the entire story is Amy Wallace and she’s a lesbian. It’s taken for granted that she is therefore virtuous and wise and brave and noble. Unfortunately she is so perfect that she ends up having no personality at all.

Peck’s character is established as cold, calculating, smart and ruthless but then towards the end he starts doing out-of-character stupid things, mainly because that’s the only way to set up the very contrived ending.

There are however some really interesting aspects to the story. Apart from Peck there are three significant male characters, Steven Arrocas, Van Stretch and Raymond Avilla. All three are sexually inadequate. It is clear that they are incapable of satisfying their wives sexually. What’s interesting is that their sexual inadequacy seems to be linked to moral weakness and a general inability to take charge of their lives. And all three are aware that Denis Peck’s claims that he could satisfy their wives sexually are well-founded. Whatever moral failings he may have it’s clear that Peck does not lack sexual potency.

And while the idea that if a wife isn’t sexually satisfied by her husband she will go looking for a man who can satisfy her might be cynical it’s something that has been known to happen.

Peck is able to taunt Raymond Avilla and convince him that his wife Kathleen is playing around behind his back, with Peck. The taunts hit home because Raymond knows they’re plausible. Raymond’s sexual inadequacy makes him vulnerable and that vulnerability makes him a less effective cop.

And the three sexually inadequate men are rather creepy. Peck might be evil but he isn’t creepy and pathetic.

The casting is significant. John Kapelos as Steven Arrocas is a loser trying to be a big man but still living in his father’s shadow. William Baldwin as Van Stretch is a neurotic contemptible mess whose violence comes from weakness. Baldwin makes him slimy and clammy. Andy Garcia plays Raymond Avilla as a man afflicted by doubts and self-pity. These are weak men played by actors who effectively capture the characters’ essential weakness.

By contrast Richard Gere as Peck exudes confidence and charisma and has women lining up to sleep with him. He’s the total alpha male.

Internal Affairs has some real problems but it is perhaps more interesting than it set out to to be. Recommended.

Physical Evidence (1989)

Physical Evidence is a 1989 mystery crime thriller, it’s a courtroom drama and it also has serious neo-noir vibes.

It was directed (but not written) by Michael Crichton. It might seem like an outlier in Crichton’s filmography but in his early career as a novelist he wrote relatively straightforward thrillers so it’s reasonable to assume that he had some affinity for the thriller genre.

It starts with a very impressive visual set-piece on a bridge. Which leads to the discovery of the body of Jake Farley, a sleazy nightclub owner with a spectacularly shady past.

Cop Joe Paris (Burt Reynolds) is arrested for Farley’s murder. Joe is already on suspension. He’s a good cop with a very short temper which has landed him in trouble many times.

Hotshot lady lawyer Jenny Hudson (Theresa Russell) works for the Public Defender’s Office and she begs for the case. It will be a very high-profile case, the kind of case that can make or break an ambitious lawyer’s career.

The audience has no idea whether or not Joe is guilty. The evidence against him is very strong but if he is being framed by someone powerful you would expect that, and Joe has plenty of powerful enemies.

Jenny Hudson also has no idea whether or not Joe is guilty. She’s a lawyer. Her job is to defend him either way.

And the uncertainty about Joe’s guilt is maintained quite skilfully, for a while at least. The evidence against him steadily accumulates but the possibility that someone might be framing him also increases. We still do not know. Nor does Jenny. It’s a good basis for a neo-noir suspense thriller and it works.

The main problem is that this is the most potentially interesting aspect of the plot and it gradually gets lost and the story thereafter becomes rather routine.

There’s also the problem that courtroom dramas are always dull because courtroom scenes are always dull. They’re stagey, rather than cinematic. They’re all about dialogue and dialogue scenes are inherently uncinematic. They’re at best a necessary evil. And it’s very difficult to get away from that staginess in courtroom scenes.

I have seen very few Burt Reynolds movies but he’s pretty good here, not making Joe too sympathetic but just sympathetic enough.

Theresa Russell’s specialty was playing offbeat roles in offbeat roles in offbeat movies for directors like Ken Russell and her husband Nicolas Roeg. This is a much more straightforward role but she handles it well. I like the way she does the full-on power-dressing girl boss thing on the job but throws off that persona as soon as she’s off-duty. She’s a pro. The girl boss routine is part of the job.

The sexual tension between Joe and Jenny works quite well because they’re so radically mismatched. Yes, that’s an established formula, but Reynolds and Russell carry it off well enough.

It bombed at the box office but there’s nothing really wrong with this movie. It’s a bit like an old-fashioned B-movie or a well-crafted TV-movie. It’s decent entertainment but it isn’t going to knock your socks off. And if, like me, you’re a bit of a Theresa Russell completist you’ll enjoy her performance.

This movie is paired with The Anderson Tapes on a double-header Blu-Ray from Mill Creek. There are no extras but it looks terrific. Physical Evidence isn’t particularly special but if you buy the set for The Anderson Tapes (and you should) it’s worth giving Physical Evidence a spin as well.

No Mercy (1986)

No Mercy is a 1986 thriller which pairs Richard Gere and Kim Basinger. It could perhaps at a stretch be considered to have a slight neo-noir tinge and also perhaps an erotic thriller vibe although to be honest that’s a lot of a stretch.

As an indirect result of a bungled drugs stakeout Chicago cop Eddie Jillette and his partner Joe Collins stumble upon something much bigger - a planned hit. Eddie and Joe, perhaps unwisely, arrange a meet with a mysterious New Orleans businessman (we will find out that his name is Paul Deveneux) who wants a rival rubbed out. Eddie poses as a hitman. Perhaps Eddie and Joe should have realised the meet might not go smoothly. The guy who wants to hire a hitman doesn’t seem the type. He’s more of an old southern aristocracy type.

This guy has a girl with him. Her name is Michelle (Kim Basinger). She’s the reason for the hit. So it’s not business but a personal grudge, which could get messy.

It does get messy. Eddie’s partner gets disembowelled. He’s not the only one who gets killed. Eddie is off to New Orleans, ostensibly to bring his partner’s killer to justice but in fact his objective is revenge pure and simple.

The problem is that Eddie doesn’t know the identity of the target of the aborted hit. All he knows is that the target was a powerful ruthless man, and that he is Michelle’s owner.

Eddie is going to have to track down Michelle. He finds her, and he finds the man who owns her, Losado (Jeroen Krabbé). He also finds out that everything that he assumed he knew about the case is wrong, and everything that he assumed he knew about Michelle is wrong as well.

Another unpleasant discovery is that the New Orleans cops do not want him in their city. Or rather Deveneux’s brother doesn’t want him in New Orleans. Deveneux is extremely rich. If he’s upset, the New Orleans PD is upset.

Eddie ends up in the middle of a bayou, handcuffed to Michelle. They’re lucky to be alive. Losado doesn’t just employ a couple of goons to enforce his will, he has a veritable private army.

Eddie is just one cop on his own in a strange city but by now he’s seriously annoyed. You don’t want to get Eddie Jillette seriously annoyed. And as far as Eddie is concerned if his mission is to be a kamikaze mission, so be it.

He still has to figure out what to do with this strange girl. And Michelle is a very strange girl. Eddie is not just in a strange city. He’s stumbled into a totally foreign world. This is the world of the old French Louisiana. It’s the 1980s in Chicago but here time has stood still for a couple of centuries. And Michelle is like a girl from another planet.

Looking at online reviews I’m surprised that so many people dislike this movie. There’s no shortage of adrenalin-rush action and mayhem with some terrific action set-pieces. There’s good suspense. There’s a weird twisted love story. There’s an exotic setting. As far as thrillers go this one ticks most of my boxes.

I’m also surprised so many people dislike Richard Gere. His performance is very much in that intense edgy wired mode that was so popular at the time but for my money Gere does this sort of thing with more class than most actors of this type. He doesn’t have to shout and wave his arms about and jump up and down to get the message across that he’s a man on the edge. I like him a lot in this movie.

As for Kim Basinger, she has a tricky role. She’s playing a woman who just doesn’t see the world the way women of the 80s see it. She’s like a woman living in two different eras at the same time. I think Basinger is very good indeed in this part.

There’s nothing subtle about Jeroen Krabbé’s performance as Losado but he radiates pure evil and that’s what the part calls for.

The one weakness is that although the acting chemistry between Gere and Basinger is excellent this is a movie that needed a lot more erotic heat.

Richard Pearce is not a particularly big name as a director but he handles matters here with assurance.

No Mercy hits the ground running and maintains the momentum. Whether it’s a neo-noir or an erotic thriller or a plain old action thriller doesn’t matter - whatever it is it delivers the goods. Highly recommended.

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray presentation looks great.

Pale Flower (1964)

Pale Flower is a 1964 Japanese film relased, surprisingly, not by Nikkatsu Studio but by rival studio Shochiku (although it was independently produced). It’s a film noir but not a conventional one and it’s a yakuza movie but not a conventional one.

Muraki (Ryô Ikebe) is a yakuza who had just been released from prison after serving a sentence for killing a member of a rival gang. Now he discovers that the two gangs have joined forces, but there are no hard feelings.

Muraki is obsessed by gambling. He meets a strange girl, a fellow gambling obsessive. Her name is Saeko (Mariko Kaga).

They are drawn to each other, but not just by their shared love for gambling. They both feel somehow doomed, as if their lives have no meaning and no direction and can only end in disaster. The gambling is clearly symbolic - they both have a desire to play for the highest stakes of all, life itself. There are lots of gambling scenes in this movie.

It’s important to note that the plot has not offered us a single reason why these two people see their lives as having no value or purpose. It’s something missing within them.

Perhaps they fall in love. They don’t seem quite sure about that. Perhaps their obsession with each other is like their passion for gambling - it’s just a way to deal with the boredom.

The plot kicks in slowly but this is not a heavily plot-driven movie. The two now united yakuza gangs are facing a challenge from a powerful Osaka-based gang. Muraki will be a key player in the defensive moves against this encroaching gang. Muraki believes he will have a high price to pay but he accepts this with his usual indifference.

Ryô Ikebe as Muraki gives a very noir (and very good) performance. Mariko Kaga as Saeko is rather mesmerising.

Saeko is not really a femme fatale. It’s more that these are two doomed people drawn together, not to try to save each other but to share their doom.

Director Masahiro Shinoda claimed that the background to the movie was Japan’s political position at the time as a not entirely willing U.S satellite which he felt had robbed the country of a sense of purpose. This is the kind of thing that exercises the minds of intellectuals while ordinary people are too busy living their lives. I cannot see any political angle whatsoever to this movie, except perhaps that it does give us a sense of a society adrift, and individuals within that society adrift. But mercifully there’s no overt political content whatsoever.

Although stylistically they are poles apart in its own way this movie is, like Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter and Branded To Kill, an attempt to reinvent the yakuza movie. There’s an intriguing subtly surreal dream sequence.

The film is set in Tokyo but the location shooting was done in Yokohama. It has a very noir look.

It certainly has plenty of noirish impending doom vibes. But it’s not quite straightforward noir. Muraki knows that he’s headed for disaster but unlike the typical noir protagonist he makes no attempts to escape his fate.

Muraki’s motivations are to some extent determined by the yakuza code of honour but to me this doesn’t feel like a conventional yakuza movie, or even a conventional Japanese movie.

I got some rather French vibes from it. A definite whiff of existentialism. If Camus had written a screenplay for a yakuza movie he might have come up with something like this. It doesn’t feel quite Japanese. There’s some Christian symbolism. It seems to be about people finding all the existing belief systems (traditional Japanese values, the yakuza code, Christianity, materialism, consumerism) unsatisfying. So they’re left with a vague existentialism of a warped kind - a death fetish.

There’s also a fascinating hint that both Muraki and Saeko have an erotic interest in death, and particularly in murder. In fact that’s the whole basis for their attraction. Saeko is attracted to Muraki because he killed a man (that’s why he was in prison). But not only that. He enjoyed it. It was the greatest pleasure he had ever experienced in his life. Muraki is attracted to Saeko because she understands how he feels about killing. And then there’s a wildcard in the pack - Joh, a stone-cold half-Chinese hitman also in love with killing.

This is vaguely similar to the territory explored years later in Basic Instinct. In this case we have three characters with a sex-death fetish.

This is a very dark disturbing provocative movie. Very highly recommended.

It’s on Blu-Ray in the Criterion Collection.

Someone to Watch Over Me (1987)

Someone to Watch Over Me is a 1987 Ridley Scott thriller which flopped badly at the box office.

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.

Mike Keegan is assigned as one of her babysitters. He’s uncomfortable because he knows that Claire has been lied to. He doesn’t believe that the cops can keep her safe.

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.

The plot is strictly by the numbers. There’s not a single original twist.

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.

Most importantly, he’s a passive pathetic whiney loser.

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.

This is not an erotic thriller. It could be described as an un-erotic thriller or an anti-erotic thriller. It could also be described as an unromantic thriller.

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.

Breathless (1983)

Breathless is a 1983 neo-noir based on Jean-Luc Godards’ 1960 À bout de souffle. It was directed by Jim McBride.

Jesse Lujack (Richard Gere) is caught up in a spectacular self-destructive spiral but he doesn’t know it yet. He has to get from Vegas to LA to collect some money so he steals a Porsche.

By the time he reaches LA there’s a dead cop lying by the side of the highway.

He collects his money but to his horror it’s a cheque, not cash. If you’re a regular law-abiding citizen and it’s clean money a cheque is no problem. If you’re a gambler who has not always been on the right side of the law and it’s dirty money a cheque can be a huge drama.

Within a few hours he’s carried out a minor robbery and stolen another car. He should be keeping a law profile but Jesse is just not capable of doing that. He’s extravagant and wild and crazy and he attracts attention everywhere he goes.

He’s intending to head for Mexico with Monica (Valérie Kaprisky) but Monica doesn’t know that yet. He and Monica had a brief but exciting fling in Vegas. Jesse just knows that Monica is the girl for him. Monica is not at all sure that Jesse is the man for her. She’s about to take her degree and begin a successful career. The last thing she needs is to get involved with a crazy irresponsible loser like Jesse.

On the other hand Jesse is a very good-looking sexy bad boy and what girl can resist a guy like that?

Jesse qualifies as an authentic film noir protagonist. He’s a bit of a bad boy but he’s not really evil. He thinks his problems are due to bad luck but in fact they’re the result of his character flaws. The key to Jesse’s character is that he’s a loser who thinks he’s a winner. He’s ludicrously over-confident. He thinks his charm and his confidence will keep him out of serious trouble. He makes one bad decision after another and he has no idea just how deep a hole he is digging for himself.

Richard Gere’s hyperactive charisma-overload performance is perfect. He captures Jesse’s obliviousness to reality very neatly.

Jesse is not conventionally likeable. Having Jesse in your life would be a nightmare. We care what happens to him not because we like him but because he is a hunted animal and all the odds are stacked against him and we know he’ll just keep doing dumb things. He can’t help it. He’s not so much breathless as hopeless and clueless. He’s so dumb and hopeless that we feel that it’s cruel to hunt him down like a feral dog. And somehow Gere manages to persuade us to be on his side.

Monica is not a femme fatale in a conventional sense (she is not scheming or manipulative) but she is a disastrous choice for Jesse. She is way out of his league. He should just head to Mexico without her. Rich respectable girls will always get guys like Jesse in trouble. And Monica is at heart respectable.

Valérie Kaprisky has had a lengthy successful career in France but Breathless seems to have been her only significant Hollywood role.

This movie is as hyperactive as Jesse. This is the only Jim McBride-directed movie I’ve seen but based on this the man knows how to make a wild rollercoaster of a crime thriller. There are definitely touches of dark humour. It’s like Jesse himself. It dares us not to enjoy ourselves.

I love that at one point our couple on the run end up in a movie theatre and the movie that is playing is Gun Crazy, the greatest couple-on-the-run movie ever made.

Jesse lives in a fantasy world in which he’s the hero. He loves comic books and the world of the Silver Surfer is more real to him than the real world. And the movie to an extent takes us into Jesse’s fantasy world. We’re seeing the world the way Jesse sees it. We’re seeing Jesse trying to be a comic-book hero. The movie takes place in a kind of heightened reality.

Apart from that interesting detached from reality vibe this is also a hugely entertaining movie.

Breathless is great stuff. Very highly recommended.

The Blu-Ray includes an appreciation by Mark Kermode which is very worthwhile. I love his enthusiasm for this movie and I share it.

American Gigolo (1980)

American Gigolo was written and directed by Paul Schrader and it propelled Richard Gere into the top tier of Hollywood movie stars.

This movie dates from a fascinating transitional period for Hollywood at the tail end of the 1970s, along with movies such as The Eyes of Laura Mars. Hollywood was about to say farewell to the grimy gritty miserable politically obsessed 70s and embrace 80s glamour and decadence. Personally I think it was a change for the better.

The emergence of Richard Gere also paved the way for a new breed of 80s male movie star such as Tom Cruise and, later in the decade, James Spader. Gere was certainly a breath of fresh air after the excessively mannered and contrived performances of 70s stars like de Niro, Pacino, Nicholson and Hoffman.

While the title describes Julian, the protagonist played by Richard Gere, as a gigolo he is in fact a prostitute. A male equivalent of a call-girl. He only services female clients.

He doesn’t try to pretend to himself that he’s not a whore. He talks about turning tricks. He doesn’t feel guilty about it. He just accepts it. He takes pride in his work. It’s not just about being good in bed. He’s charming and amusing and cultured.

Then he meets Michelle (Lauren Hutton). She’s not a client, and yet she is. Of a sort. She’s prepared to pay him for sex. Just as female prostitutes learn a lot about what makes men tick so a male prostitute inevitably learns a lot about what makes women tick. And Julian actually likes women. He knows that Michelle wants more than a roll in the hay. And maybe he starts to want more than that too. Falling for a client is of course not recommended.

And he knows that she’s married.

And then he turns a trick in Palm Springs and it gets a bit kinky. Handcuffs and that sort of thing. That’s not Julian’s scene.

And then there’s a murder. Julian doesn’t see how he could possibly be a serious suspect and he has the crazy idea that if you’re innocent you’ll be OK. Unless someone is trying to frame you. Someone smart and ruthless.

This is definitely a neo-noir of sorts. Julian isn’t quite a classic noir protagonist. He isn’t tempted into crime by some personal flaw. He’s basically a decent guy, and apart from his mode of earning a living he’s totally law-abiding. He isn’t greedy. He likes money but he likes to earn it ethically. He’s drawn into a noir nightmare mostly by being in the wrong place at the wrong time and by the fact that without knowing what is happening he’s hopelessly out of his depth.

And the paranoia level starts to head into the extreme zone.

Michelle is not a femme fatale, except in the sense that getting involved with a woman with a very powerful husband can be hazardous and maybe she’ll drag him down without wanting to. Maybe she’s trapped in some ways as well.

Visually and stylistically this movie has serious neo-noir vibes. To a large extent it established the visual template for 80s/90s neo-noir and erotic thrillers. It’s a great-looking movie. The whole look and feel and tone of this movie marks a break with the 70s.

There’s a slight European flavour. And maybe a dash of artiness, but not in a bad way.

It has a cool detached style. It’s rather minimalist. I love the fact that we get no backstory for Julian. We don’t know a thing about his past. Schrader is confident that we will learn all we need to know about him by seeing the way he behaves now, and he’s confident that Gere is good enough to reveal Julian’s personality without needing to tell us how he feels through dialogue. And Gere is good enough.

Richard Gere is excellent. He’s not immoral but maybe he’s a little amoral. He’s rich but his occupation makes him an outsider. He doesn’t want to undermine society’s moral fabric. He’d just like society to leave him alone.

It’s a movie that avoids politics. It also avoids moralising. Julian does not consider that he is doing anything wrong. Some laws are just stupid and unnecessary.

This movie reminds me a lot of Klute. Both Bree in Klute and Julian in American Gigolo are very good prostitutes because they enjoy giving the client a genuinely satisfying experience. When Bree finds a man who offers her his love she is bewildered and hostile. When Julian finds a woman who offers him her love he has no idea how to handle the situation.

An intelligent slow-burn very stylish neo-noir. Very highly recommended. It would make a fine double bill with The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978).

The Criterion Blu-Ray looks good and includes a stack of extras.

L.A. Confidential (1997)

I saw L.A. Confidential years ago and really disliked it. Rewatching it now has made me change my opinion quite substantially.

It was directed and co-written by Curtis Hanson, based on James Ellroy’s novel.

The first thing to note is one of my quibbles with this movie. It’s the 1950s but the men don’t wear hats. And not a single person smokes. So this is not the 1950s. And apart from those two details overall this movie is just not convincing at all in its attempts to capture the period flavour. A period settings for a movie is always a mistake. It never rings true. This one looks like 90s people on their way to a 50s-themes costume party.

Fortunately this movie does have a lot of other things going for it.

This is the story of three cops. They know each other slightly and they don’t like each other. All three are morally compromised in some way. All three will reach a point where they have to make a choice. A difficult possibly dangerous choice. But still possibly preferable to continuing on their present course.

Bud White (Russell Crowe) is considered a thug even by his fellow cops. Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) is a college grad fast-tracked for promotion and now he’s totally out of his depth as a detective lieutenant. Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) no longer cares about the job. He’s a technical consultant to a TV cop show and he hobnobs with Hollywood types. He’s corrupt, but only in a very trivial way. He’s been doing business with sleazy scandal magazine publisher and part-time blackmailer Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito).

This is a cop movie but it’s also a movie about Hollywood.

The plot starts to kick in with a massacre at the Nite Owl coffee lounge. Six corpses, blown apart by pump-action shotguns. There are three obvious suspects. And a rape victim’s testimony can put the case against them beyond doubt.

The plot is incredibly convoluted but that serves a purpose. What is really going is only very gradually revealed to both the audience and the three cops. Initially it seems like a routine if grisly crime. Then it starts to look like something a bit bigger, as other incidents seem to be tied in. Then it starts to look like something really big as more and more odd things that don’t fit start to fit. The audience doesn’t know just how big this case is going to get. Nor do the three cops.

There’s a very rich guy operating a high-class call girl racket. The gimmick is that the girls get plastic surgery to make them look like Hollywood movie stars. Bud has had a brief puzzling encounter with one of the girls. He thought she’d been beaten up but he was wrong. Then he meets Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger). She’s also one of the whores. She’s the Veronica Lake look-alike. Bud gets involved with her. What is he up to? What is she up to? Is she going to be the femme fatale of the story? She sure looks like a femme fatale, but you can’t take anything in this story at face value.

The focus is on the three cops. Ed Exley is a Boy Scout but he’s ambitious and while he still thinks of himself as a moral paragon his ambition has corrupted him. He’s forgotten why he became a cop. Until something reminds him.

Jack Vincennes has long since lost sight of the reasons he became a cop. Morally he just goes with the flow, collects small payoffs and merely goes through the motions on the job. But ethically he has his limits.

Bud is the most interesting because right from the start he’s a mass of contradictions. He’s a vicious violent cynical thug but where women are concerned he’s a knight in shining armour. And there’s no fakery to it. He remembers why he joined the force. He saw a woman beaten to death. He became a cop to stop stuff like that from happening to women.

Lynn is a less central character but she’s interesting because you can’t predict her. She could turn out to be a Good Girl or a Bad Girl. Maybe she really has fallen in love with Bud.

One really interesting aspect to this film is that the evil comes from the corruption, not from the crimes themselves. The drug bust early on is pointless. They’re just a young guy and a young girl smoking a little weed. The prostitution racket harms no-one. The girls are well paid, they don’t mind the work and the guy who runs the racket treats them extremely well. The problem comes from the fact that making these activities illegal guarantees that the cops and city officials will become corrupted and that organised crime will become involved. It’s the corruption that is the source of all the evil.

It’s also worth noting that while Bud is aways trying to rescue damsels in distress he’s not trying to save Lynn. She doesn’t need saving. Maybe that’s why he falls in love with her.

Guy Pearce is good. Kevin Spacey is very good. Russell Crowe is superb, making Bud’s contradictions believable. Kim Basinger doesn’t have to do much more than make Lynn enigmatic, which she does.

I liked L.A. Confidential very much the second time around. Complex and tightly constructed. Highly recommended.