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Disclosure Customer Reviews (4 - 6 of 21 Reviews)

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A Missed Opportunity: A Sacrifice of Substance for Sex
I can still remember reading Michael Crichton's DISCLOSURE for the first time. I was in the sixth grade and this novel completely caught me up in a world in which I didn't belong (and yet, strangely felt a part of). I only recently watched the film version of the novel and I have to say I was sadly disappointed. The topic of Crichton's novel is so rich: sexual harassment in the workplace. It could have spawned a really interesting & intriguing thriller. Instead, the movie gets caught up in Crichton's obsession with technology and computers. Admittedly, these elements are in the novel (as they are in all of his books). But, Crichton is generally able to place interesting characters into interesting situations. The point of the story is to explore those characters and follow their development. The technology, ideally, just serves to complicate matters and place our characters in ever unfamiliar and evolving territory, allowing their development to be interesting and complicated.

DISCLOSURE, however, decides to focus more heavily on those technical aspects of Crichton's work, pushing the characters to the back burner and rendering the famous "sex" sequence the climax of the film (no pun intended). It should not be the climax, but that is the impression the audience is left with. For the rest of the movie, we are asked to jump through a whole bunch of hoops as a viewer, turning the interesting story of sexual harassment into a "whodunit" mystery in which we are trying to figure out the conspiracy behind the entire plot. My only wish is that DISCLOSURE had decided to tackle its own issues along the way.

Michael Douglas is perfectly cast in his role. It seems that in most of his films, he plays men in unending pursuits of sexual pleasure. (In fact, as an aside, I would have liked to have seen him in Tom Cruise's role in EYES WIDE SHUT. He would have been perfect). Demi Moore is sexy as ever and DISCLOSURE provides audiences with one more chance to see her assets-a chance she seems so willing to grant us in the 1990s that it must have been a conditional clause in her contract. Despite her performance, however, there is something that doesn't quite fit. Demi Moore is not the best choice to play Meredith, in my opinion. There is just something about her that makes her "smart & cunning" female unconvincing. Meredith is supposed to be a devil in disguise, yet a devil who is taken, in some respects, by Douglass's character. But here, Moore seems to be playing a caricature instead of a complex human being. Instead of garnering some sympathy from the audience, which she does in the novel, she becomes the convenient villain to be sacrificed by the deus ex machine ending.

If you are a fan of Crichton's work or just want to see Demi Moore do her thing, you will probably get a kick out of DISCLOSURE. But if you are interested in watching it because you think it will explore sexual harassment in the workplace, think again.

Seducing Bill Gates
Apart from its smarts as a thriller, "Disclosure" also is the first major film to tackle a then (1994) touchy theme, sexual harrassment. There are no car chases, explosions or fistfights, in fact no violence at all unless you count a woman's attempt to rape a man. After initial surprise, the hero's wife actually supports her husband (a movie first?) And at a sedate staff meeting, an unlikely climax, the good guy wins using superior intelligence instead of force. Not many movies go against the grain of the genre and remain as thrilling as this one.

Like the Michael Crichton novel, "Disclosure" reverses even the sexual harrassment. A man (Michael Douglas) is the victim of a woman (Demi Moore) who has become his boss at a computer company. It's a provocative premise if you don't examine her motives as closely as Crichton's book did. Like the seductresses in "Basic Instinct" and "Fatal Attraction," Moore wants his body, then his life. Because he plays this role so well, Douglas is becoming typecast as a sexual object. I guess there are worse fates awaiting actors his age.

With the exception of Moore, who is much too obvious, it has excellent actors, among them Donald Sutherland and Dennis Miller (in hs pre-comic mode.) It takes full advantage of the Seattle settings and a multi-level office complex of steel, glass and stairs that workers might well cross a picket line to enter. ILM has concocted some tricky computer and virtual reality effects that provide added dimension. Not that "Disclosure" needs any that its script does not already supply. It's unusual for a Hollywood thriller to thrill us with ideas.

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