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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