Noirvember: Jagged Edge (1985)

A script by Joe Eszterhas, a central character who is confident and sexy, but may also have committed a savage murder, and a major star helping to add some sparkle to enjoyably trashy pulp fare, it’s easy to see why some view Jagged Edge as a warm-up for Basic Instinct, but it’s also important to note that the two films are as different as they are similar.

Jeff Bridges plays Jack Forrester, a man accused of the vicious murder of his wife. He stands to gain everything from her death, and a lot of people know that the marriage had some problems, but he protests his innocence. Picking Teddy Barnes (Glenn Close) as his attorney, a woman who had hoped to leave criminal law behind, Forrester soon learns that his good looks and charm won’t be enough to stop the truth coming out. And the truth isn’t very nice. But it doesn’t necessarily make him a murderer.

Perhaps I have been spoiled over the years, and I have certainly been influenced by seeing many other Eszterhas scripts onscreen before this one, but Jagged Edge is a surprisingly tame and polished affair. There’s an ill-advised blurring of boundaries between attorney and client, to put it mildly, and sex is weaponized  in a way that will be familiar to those who have seen any of his other films, but director Richard Marquand never dwells on the lustier moments. He prefers to always circle back to the courtroom proceedings, or investigation ongoing during the trial, as quickly as possible. Where others may have made this an erotic thriller with just enough courtroom scenes to keep things grounded, Marquand delivers a legal thriller with just enough chemistry between the leads to keep things sexually-charged.

Both Close and Bridges are excellent in their roles, the former smart and tough, the latter attractively carefree and advantageously looking like . . . Jeff Bridges, and they work equally well together and individually, although the film sticks with Close for most of the scenes not set in the courtroom. Peter Coyote is the prosecuting attorney, Thomas Krasny, and he’s a lot of fun in his role, the typically over-confident prosecutor who starts to become increasingly nervous as more and more cracks appear in the case. Last, but not least, I have to mention Robert Loggia, stealing a couple of scenes as a private detective named Sam Ransom (a role that for him nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, losing out to Don Ameche for his turn in Cocoon).

Solid entertainment from start to finish, Jagged Edge just doesn’t have anything that really lifts it up. No pun intended, it lacks a bit of edge. Even the John Barry score feels a bit more restrained than it could be, although I may again be dealing with my own bias caused by exposure to other movies of this ilk. I certainly enjoyed it while it was on though, and it felt like a title I was long overdue to check off my “watchlist”, but I doubt I will ever rush to rewatch it.

7/10

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Noirvember: Jade (1995)

If you only see one William Friedkin movie in your lifetime then I think you know the one you should opt for (clue = it is a horror movie, and the title rhymes with Schmexorcist), but there are one or two other strong contenders. If you only see one erotic thriller penned by Joe Eszterhas then I would always make a strong case for Basic Instinct. Want to see Linda Fiorentino being sexy and dangerous? The Last Seduction is for you. Fancy taking a chance on the film work of David Caruso? Session 9 will scratch that itch. Basically, what I am trying to say is that there is no reason to ever prioritise a viewing of Jade.

The plot revolves around a murder, of course, and David Caruso is the main investigating officer, David Corelli. It isn’t too long until some potentially embarrassing footage is discovered, requiring the investigation team to be much more sensitive. That is the plan anyway, but Corelli gets distracted when he has to question an old flame, Katrina Gavin (Linda Fiorentino), who is married to his good friend/defense attorney, Matt Gavin (Chazz Palminteri). There’s also an elusive woman to be found, Jade, who is said to be the best of the many sexual partners that the murder victim would spend his time with.

What Jade gets wrong, in terms of it being an erotic thriller, is, well, everything. The few sexy moments aren’t sexy, the cast have no chemistry, and absolutely none of the murder mystery elements matter, because viewers don’t ever care about the deaths onscreen or the main characters. It’s almost as if Eszterhas started writing a parody of his own work, with everything shown up for the dumb it is, and then forgot about it, having left it in a drawer for some time until he was asked to write another slick erotic thriller trying to recapture his career-best form.

It doesn’t help that Friedkin doesn’t seem interested in the expected tropes and story beats. Aside from one or two decent flourishes, he seems to blindly stumble from one scene to the next, only seeming to become energised when he gets to shoot a car chase that suffers from a) feeling shoehorned in to a film that is otherwise completely sluggish, and b) not being half as good as the other famous car chase sequences that he has delivered onscreen. It’s almost as if he felt that the script and cast would be assembled by people who cared about everything more than he ever could, and that would be enough to make it all work well. 

The perceived antipathy from Friedkin filters throughout his cast, which is a real shame as the leads struggle through the movie as if they are wading through a treacherous bog. Florentino should be superb in this role, but her character  isn’t convincingly built up in any way, and the less said about the horrible dialogue she had to deliver the better. Caruso does his usual schtick, which doesn’t fit for this kind of film, and Palminteri feels underused (as if there’s a whole sub-plot that was excised at the last minute). There are some treats in the supporting cast, which includes Michael Biehn, Donna Murphy, Richard Crenna, and Angie Everhart, as well as very small roles for Holt McCallany and a few other familiar faces.

Beyond a basic level of film-making competence on the technical side of things, there is nothing here to make it worth your time. The relatively brief runtime is a plus (it clocks in at about 90 minutes from the opening to the start of the end credits), but I would easily recommend 100 erotic thrillers ahead of this, including a multitude of films that didn’t get anywhere near a cinema screen.

3/10

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Noir-vember: Basic Instinct (1992)

Everyone remembers Basic Instinct for one main scene, a scene that underlines it as the ultimate blend of polish and sleaze in the realm of the erotic thriller. But there’s a lot that is so often forgotten, including the plotting that helps to make it an impressive neo-noir, and even allows it to come close to being a fully-fledged giallo at times.

The opening scene is one of those forgotten elements. It’s a sex scene that ends with a brutal death, which is memorable enough, but the sheer intensity and unflinching look at the carnage prepares viewers for a very different type of film. That la petite mort, or maybe we should call it le grande mort, is the event that leads to the introduction of two cops, Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) and Gus Moran (George Dzundza), and those two cops soon end up questioning a main suspect Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone). It turns out that Tramell is a successful author, and a murder depicted in one of her books was carried out in almost exactly the same way as the murder now under investigation. Tramell seems drawn to Curran, who has a fiery and addictive personality, which is why he has been treated by Dr. Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), who is also his occasional sexual partner. The mind games begin, and don't ever really stop, and the corpses eventually start to pile up as Curran and Tramell enjoy a fiery liaison that shows they could bring out the best and worst in one another.

Written by Joe Eszterhas and directed by Paul Verhoeven, there's nothing here that should work as well as it does. It's all a messy blend of clichés and ridiculous, but cine-cool, dialogue, with Verhoeven displaying his usual consideration for levels of taste and subtlety. Despite the big names and the polish, this is pure trash, but in all the right ways. And it's self-aware, playing out very much like some late night TV show about a grizzled detective, but with added bloodshed and sweaty sex scenes.

Douglas has never been afraid to play flawed men/anti-heroes/villains, and he does another great job here, portraying someone who can no longer run fast enough to stay ahead of the problems caused by his addictive personality (be it drugs, sex, or just visceral thrills). He's also happy to take on a role of someone potentially being played like a fiddle, and he's basically a strong supporting player in a film that showcases Stone at her best. She's sexy, smart, strong, and definitely has a hint of danger about her. The film made her reputation, and with good reason. It's hard to imagine anyone else taking on the role and doing it so well, although I can easily imagine some getting it horribly wrong. Tripplehorn has arguably the most thankless of the main roles, but she does well with what she's given, Dzundza plays a character so obviously due to reach a certain major plot point that he may as well be in a parody, and you have a cast further fleshed out by the likes of Denis Arndt, Leilani Sarelle, Chelzie Ross, Daniel von Bargen, Wayne Knight, Stephen Tobolowsky, Mitch Pileggi, and Dorothy Malone. Whether their roles are big or small, everyone works well enough with the material, and they're all guided by a director who is, as is so often the case, confident in his way of approaching the material.

There's more to highlight here, from the Jan de Bont cinematography to that lush Jerry Goldsmith score, and dismissing Basic Instinct as glossy smut does a major disservice to just how nicely it manages to maintain such an unusual intensity throughout, barrelling along from one hedonistic pleasure to the next as things build and build to what may be best described as an expectedly messy climax.

9/10

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June-Claude Van Damme: Nowhere To Run (1993)

The funniest thing about revisiting the filmography of Jean-Claude Van Damme is finding out how others view his films, and also finding out that some of them weren't the popular hits that the younger version of me thought they were. Take this film, for example. I thought Nowhere To Run was an easy success for JCVD. It wasn't. It made money, but it didn't make lots and lots of money.

The plot sees Van Damme playing an escaped prisoner who ends up being in the right place at the right time for one single mother (Rosanna Arquette) who is being given a hard time by developers who want her to sell her home and stop getting in the way of a potential gold mine (metaphorically). Joss Ackland is the main baddie, but he uses Ted Levine to oversee the actual dirty work, and also makes use of a local law enforcement officer (Lonnie, played by Edward Blatchford).

Based on a script by Joe Eszterhas, Leslie Bohem, and Randy Feldman, Nowhere To Run is simply an updated riff on Shane, with extra moments that allow the leading man to either take his clothes off or ride about on a motorbike and look cool (or allow his stunt double to do that anyway, which is how it appears in a number of scenes). The pacing works well, despite this being far from the most action-heavy of Van Damme's movies from this time, and the characters are developed just enough beyond the paper-thin to help you care about how things pan out.

It helps that the cast all do a good job. As well as the two leads warming up to one another throughout, leading to some gratuitous nudity and sexy sex time, you get decent turns from Ackland and Blatchford, and a scene-stealing performance from Levine, who benefits the most from the script. You also get a couple of great child performances, from Kieran Culkin and Tiffany Taubman, both of whom latch on to Van Damme with an ease and innocence that kids can have within their first encounter with an adult they decide is okay by them.

Director Robert Harmon does decidedly okay work, but it's a shame that he didn't decide to shake things up a bit, either in terms of some more creative acton sequences or in terms of giving more time to character moments for Arquette and Levine, the former underserved and the latter having so much fun that viewers could have been rewarded by having more of him.

Nowhere To Run remains an enjoyable slice of entertainment, and Van Damme exudes enough charisma here to make it feel completely natural that the film was adapted to fit him into the lead role, but it's also very disposable, and ultimately easily forgettable.

6/10

The disc be here.
Americans can purchase it here.