Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 28, 2005 | | Summary | Now Available on DVD! | Content
 | A nice dark little movie, where the good guys don't win and the guilty go unpunished. It is pretty unusual to have such a strong female character, it was entertaining to see a woman as tough as nails and unflinching. The male characters were considerably less developed. You are bludgeoned with the "men will do anything for sex" message - so what if that cliché happens to be true. The slight parallels to Double Indemnity are fun, but Linda Fiorentino would mop up the floor with Barbara Stanwyck. This is a stripped down, bare bones DVD. The sound is simple stereo, not that is matters because this is not an action flick.
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| Rating | | | Date | June 22, 2005 | | Summary | Turn down the STEREOtypes! | Content
| THE LAST SEDUCTION may have been the last thing I saw before I turned off the lights last night but it wasn't the first thing I thought of this morning. The film is pretty much already out of my mind, but then I'm not usually swayed by femme fatales who wreck havoc with easily impressible minds.
Yes, Linda Fiorentino is amazing as an evil woman who masterminds immoral acts with the "help" of besotted (or formerly besotted) men. Yes, she is probably the kind of woman a man who sees with his eyes (and not his heart) would drop to his knees for and make one last plea. Keeping in mind all the glowing praise of Ms. Fiorentino's role, I still believe there is nothing here that hasn't been done before. Lena Olin, on the other hand, took the femme fatale part to new heights in the disturbing film "Romeo is Bleeding." But I digress...
While it is a bit difficult to imagine a man such as Mike (played by Peter Berg) throwing in his towel of good behavior for sex and "deep" conversation (mostly full of phallic talk and little else), I found it much easier to accept what he does because of Berg's superb acting. The viewer doesn't doubt for a second that despite all of Mike's good-heartedness, there is a part of him that wants to break free from the mold he has made for himself. The small town "nothing ever happens" (again used countless times before in film) is particular stifling and Fiorentino's Bridget, in all her beauty and defiance, is exactly what Mike thinks he's been looking for to leave his humdrum life behind.
Because there are a few major plot twists and spoilers are un-called for in any review situation I can't really give away too much of what goes on here. Let's just say the viewer knows right away what kind of woman "Bridget" is and that the film soon kicks off with a "girl meets boy" theme. With THE LAST SEDUCTION, though, there is a depraved and indifferent slant to romance which is both its blessing and curse.
As for the stereotypes I longed to turn down...when they were used in a "tongue-in-cheek" manner and played for laughs (THE LAST SEDUCTION has some great dark comedy!), it was fine. But when stereotypes were used for shock value and plot twists, I felt a bit appalled that a movie made in the 90s would...well, actually I can't tell you because it would be a spoiler. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 27, 2005 | | Summary | Very good in many ways, but not great in any | Content
| The femme fatale was a staple of 1940s film noir: an unusually attractive and downright coldhearted woman who knows how to get what she wants by using her own femininity and sexuality to lure unsuspecting men into her trap. She's often the smartest character in the film, able to play everyone else like a piano, and do anything it takes for power and money. The Last Seduction recalls this great archetype and gives us a femme fatale so evil that it's just a joy to watch her operate.
Linda Fiorentino plays the woman in question, Bridget Gregory, who right off the bat steals $700,000 from her husband, Clay (Bill Pullman), who got that money from illegally selling drugs that was able to acquire as a doctor. Bridget hightails it out of New York City and ends up hiding out in a town called Beston in upstate New York, where she plans to live under an assumed name, Wendy Kroy, until things cool down and she can return to New York.
It is in Beston that she meets her patsy, a local man seeking love and affection named Mike (Peter Berg), who falls hard for "Wendy" when he meets her in a bar. Bridget uses Mike for sex, but he constantly tries to pry into her personal life, which she will have no part of. She scares him a bit when she starts talking about killing bad men for money, and when he will not relent with his quest for personal details, she pushes back on him about his secret from when he lived in Buffalo. Despite all of this, Mike cannot resist her charms, but we get the feeling that something bad is going to go down when Clay finally catches up with Bridget--that is, unless she can get to him first.
The Last Seduction was directed by John Dahl, and originally played on cable TV after being passed over by distributors. After it proved to be a great success, the film then received a theatrical release--quite an unusual scenario. At any rate, this is a very good film with some excellent characters. Bridget is the kind of character that you love to hate, because she manages to manipulate situations so well, and even though she's diabolical, you have to give her credit, because she's damn smart and she knows exactly what she's doing.
However, I make a judgment on recommending a film based on whether I would add the movie to my DVD collection, and with this film, I didn't feel any special desire to do so. It's clever, but it's not overwhelming clever. It's thrilling in parts, but I wasn't on the edge of my seat. It's funny sometimes, but my chuckles never escalated to a guffaw. And while it makes the viewer think while watching it, afterwards there isn't much reflection to be done. But if you're looking to be entertained for a couple of hours, you could do a lot worse than The Last Seduction. |
| Rating | | | Date | February 09, 2005 | | Summary | Classic movie, not so classy presentation | Content
| John Dahl's "The Last Seduction" captures the flavor of film noir perfectly. Bridgett (Linda Fiorentino)seems to have it all; she's beautiful, bright but married to a dead end job and a dead beat wannabe doctor Clay (Bill Pullman). Clay's pulled the ultimate drug deal; he's illegally purchased medications with cocaine in them and sold them to drug dealers on the street. To do this he borrowed $100,000 from a loan shark. With the profits, he plans on living in high style with his wife. Bridget has other plans. After a fight, she steals the money with the intention of keeping it all for herself. She disappears in a small town hoping to hold on to the money until her attorney (J. T. Walsh)can complete her divorce. Changing her name, she takes a job at an insurance company. She meets Mike Swale (Peter Berg)in a local bar. He's infatuated with her from the moment he meets her. "Wendy" as she's now called has plans for him and her ex that will allow her to keep all the money for herself.
A direct descendant of "Double Indemnity" (Bridget gives her name as "Mrs. Neff" at one point a tip of the hat to the classic movie and book)and other noir thrillers, "The Last Seduction" got dumped on cable but when the distributor realized it had such a great movie they released it to theaters. Widely lauded for her role, Linda Fiorentino could have scored an Oscar nomination--if not for the fact that HBO showed this before it was released to theaters. Bill Pullman turns in a twisted performance as Clay playing with the audience expectations created by his appearence in other movies as the good guy. He gives a great performance. There's hardly a weak performance in the film and Dahl's direction is so sure handed you'd imagine this was his tenth or twentieth film not one of his first. The late great J.T. Walsh brings the oily lawyer Frank Griffith to life in a great supporting turn.
That was the good news. The bad is that this great movie has been given a basic DVD presentation and, what's worse, it doesn't look all that great. There's a number of compression artifacts. While this states that it's in the original format, it looks to me like the image was blown up from a widescreen presentation as the image looks lousy. There's no extras at all. That's too bad as this film (like "Red Rock West") deserves a commentary track from Dahl as its one of his most accomplished films. At the very least, we should have gotten a documentary on the film and why it got dumped on cable and how the film was discovered by filmgoers.
5 Stars for the movie, 2 stars for the lousy presentation by Artisan (and the lousy transfer). It's unfortunate that Lion's Gate (which distributes this) chose not to provide the package and picture quality this film deserved. |
| Rating | | | Date | December 18, 2004 | | Summary | A minor letdown | Content
| Linda Fiorentino stars as the ultimate bad girl in this little thriller directed by John Dahl; Bill Pullman, JT Walsh, and Peter Berg round out the strong cast. The plot revolves around some money that Clay(Pullman), a doctor selling drugs illegally, has just made a deal for and brought home to his wife, Bridget(Fiorentino). After getting into a fight in which Clay slaps Bridget, she takes off with the money. She procedes to some small upstate town where she decides to try to hide out for a while and see what Clay knows about her whereabouts. After talking to a lawyer friend(Walsh), she weighs her options and decides to set up shop temporarily and get a job in an insurance company. While not exactly fitting into Smalltown, USA, she nonetheless finds herself being pursued by an extremely naive local-yokel by the name of Mike Swale(Berg). The two hook up for some steamy no-strings-attached sex until Mike confesses that he loves her. Bridget decides she has him in the palm of her hand and launches into a plot to rid herself of him, her husband, and anything else that stands in the way of that large sum of illegal money.
I thought the film started off well enough, but as the plot developed I found myself having a few problems with the film. First off, the Bridget character is so completely unlikable and just downright nasty that I found myself really hating her right from the opening frames of the film, which is a problem if you are basing the whole film around her. I'm all for the femme fatale thing, but I find it more effective when the woman is more cunning, subtlely seducing the unsuspecting male victim--and viewer-- into a false sense of security and then hitting you over the head with a I-didn't-see-that-coming plot twist. Bridget is hardly subtle. In fact, she doesn't use trickery to get her male victims to do what she wants, she just asks them to do stupid things and they willingly oblige. One scene in particular that really irked me is when Bridget is tracked down by this seemingly buisness-like black private eye hired by her husband. He points a gun at her and tells her to drive. She then asks him if the thing about black guys having a big, you know, is true and then asks him to whip it out so she can see for herself. He says no at first and then decides to do it if she'll shut up. That was the point in the story where I said what the...? I thought that scene was so ridiculous. Later on there is another scene that equals or surpasses that scene in the-men-behaving-stupidly theme.
I really liked Dahl's work in Red Rock West, so I felt somewhat let down by this film. A few times I thought he took shortcuts to get a particular scene to work instead of putting some more thought into it. The film does move at a strong pace and features some very good performances, but some of the problems I mentioned earlier left me disappointed. Overall, The Last Seduction was worth the rental, but defintely won't be on my buy list. |
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