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| Last Seduction, The |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 110 |
| Public Rating: 7.53 (15 votes) |
Director: John Dahl |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Film Noir |
Year: 1994 |
| Writer(s): Steve Barancik |
| Reviewed by: Goatdog |
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Just about everyone I talked to after seeing this movie had the same reply. "I thought it was really interesting/original/well-made, but I didn't really like it." Well, I thought it was interesting, original, well-made, and had one of the strongest female leads in recent history, and I liked it. That may be because I like watching movies that make you root for despicable characters who get away with what they are doing.
This movie is a film noir told from the perspective of the femme fatale. Bridget, played by Linda Fiorentino, lives with her husband Clay, a jerk played by Bill Pullman who sells prescriptions to junkies. When she tires of his beatings and asinine behavior, she leaves with several million dollars that he owes to various loan sharks. She travels to western Pennsylvania from New York to escape him, and meets Mike, a classic noir stooge played by Peter Berg who falls instantly in love with her despite the fact that she's among the biggest bitches in screen history. She gets a job at an insurance company and lies low, hoping to avoid her husband's wrath until she can finalize a divorce from him. When it appears that he will not grant her the divorce without her returning the money, she devises a plan to get rid of him, using the lovestruck Mike as the murder weapon.
The film is relentlessly inventive and blackly funny. Fiorentino sinks her teeth into the meaty role of Bridget, who may not really have a soul. It is funny to watch her ridicule and verbally destroy everything around her, and you really do want her to get away with it, despite the fact that she's evil.
Fiorentino was robbed of a well-deserved Oscar nomination because the film's producers stupidly sold the film to a cable channel before deciding to release it theatrically. It got such good press and rave reviews that they realized they had made the wrong decision, but it was too late: Academy rules say that films cannot have shown on television prior to theatrical release. I think the producers sued, but the Academy won.
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