Comfort of StrangersRating:
Release Date: 01 June, 2004 Retail Price: $7.98 OUR Price: $7.98 You SAVE: $0.00! Cast: |
Comfort of Strangers Reviews
Dead in the Water
This second Ian McEwan novel to make it to the screen arrived with dizzying credits, apart from the stature of the novelist himself. It was directed by the daring Paul Schrader, adapted by British playwright Harold Pinter, and scored by the innovative Angelo Badalamenti. In the power cast are Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson as lovers vacationing in Venice, and Christopher Walken and Helen Mirren as Venetians who befriend them. They are costumed by Giorgio Armani and photographed by Dante Spinotti, who shot "The Insider" and "LA Confidential." The canals are impressive, but the movie is dead in the water.
Beautiful locations (old world interiors, glassmaking at Murano) and beautiful people are good for so many minutes. Nudity, lovemaking, homoeroticism and sado-masochism carry this movie a little longer. But eventually you have to tell an interesting story with plausible characters, as McEwan did in his book. That essential has eluded Schrader and his famous collaborators. The concluding murder is unbelievable and inevitable at the same time, and the ending is maddeningly ambiguous. At least the victim, like the viewer, was not bored to death. That's the best you can say about this bad DVD transfer of a disappointing film.
Pretentious and Wooden
This is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Rupert Everett is a perfect mannequin, standing around modeling his clothes in the WORST performance by any movie actor in history; Helen Mirren is totally wasted; she looks like she's barely paying attention. Richardson looks embarrassed, and Walken hams it up as his trademarked cliched "creepy guy", who's about as intriguing as a Chicken McNugget. He reminds me of the Euro seducer "The Continental" from SNL. Even the mood music is bad. The only mystery about this movie is why these horrible, stupid, and completely boring characters don't just pass out from ennui as they spout out their inane, stilted streams of dialogue. Really, this is a movie about ventriloquist dummies who get lost in the somewhat confusing streets of Venice. You will not care about these people; in fact you will need coffee to stay awake to the end.
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