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The CurveRating:
Release Date: 20 April, 1999 Retail Price: $9.98 OUR Price: $8.99 You SAVE: $0.99! Cast: Complete Cast (11 total) |
The Curve Reviews
An alternative way of getting a 4.0 g.p.a. in college
At the beginning of this 1998 film we hear a comedian explaining how colleges have a policy that if your roommate commits suicide, you get a 4.0 for the semester. This is a relatively simple idea, even if it is a complete fabrication, but it has nothing to do with a "curve" in the academic sense. I always curve my exams, which means that I take the highest score, compute the difference between the raw score and 100%, and add those points to the exams of everybody who took the exam. That means I can write hard exams and the curve will establish the relative position of everybody in the class to each other. If there is a bad question, then the curve takes it out (although students always want me to give them a point for the bad question even though that then reduces the curve accordingly). A curve is great. But this movie has nothing to do with such a curve. The policy of granting students a 4.0 because their roommate commits suicide has nothing to do with a curve. In fact, although I am not absolutely sure, I do not think the word "curve" is uttered by anybody in this movie.
However, "The Curve" is going to make you think of the academic environment, right after you think about a breaking pitch to complement a fast ball for a baseball pitcher, so at least it is leaning in the right direction as a movie title. But then I discovered that when it was released this movie was called "Dead Man's Curve." Now, that was writer-director Dan Rosen's name for the aforementioned policy, which sort of makes sense, but of course the problem with "Dead Man's Curve" as a title is that a lot of people will be thinking about the old Jan & Dean song of the same title (altogether now: "Won't come back from Dead Man's Curve"), and instead of academia they will be entertaining ideas of a drag race between a Stingray and a shiny new Jag late one night in L.A. Anyhow, the good news is that despite the inadequacy of both of its titles, the movie formerly known as "Dead Man's Curve" is a rather entertaining exploration of the twisted logic of college students.
Tim (Matthew Lillard) and Chris (Michael Vartan) are offered the 4.0 after the apparent suicide of their roommate Rand (Randall Batinkoff). The suicide is "apparent" because Rand's body has presumably been washed out to sea after a fatal fall from a cliff, and it is not really a "suicide" since Tim and Chris helped Rand along. But, hey, grades are important, especially if you want to get into a post-graduate program at Harvard, where one "B" can seal your fate. Complicating the chances of Tim and Chris getting away with murder are Rand's girlfriend Natalie (Tamara Craig Thomas), who does not believe he was suicidal, a pair of detectives (Anthony Griffith and Bo Dietl), who never run out of questions, and the campus shrink Dr. Ashley (Dana Delany), who looks like she must be smart enough to figure out that something else is going on. More importantly, Tim keeps suggesting to the police that Chris knows more than he is saying about what happened to Rand, and Emma (Keri Russell), Chris's girlfriend, cannot believe he would actually take the guaranteed 4.0 just because they are offering it to him.
This is one of those films where the story starts twisting and just keeps twisting until most viewers will give up trying to figure out what is really going on. I had fun because while I knew not to take everything at face value (a cardinal rule in such films but even more so when the corpse has gone missing) I just went along for the ride and did not bother trying to catch up with the story let alone waste brain cells trying to get ahead. Besides, you recognize most of the main cast members, and what I liked about the ending was not so much as who won but rather who lost, which appeases by primitive sense of justice. "The Curve" is a roller coaster thriller with no other real aspiration beyond keeping you guessing until the end, and in that regard it delivers enough to make it an above average entry in a genre bloated with the corpses of so many less than stellar direct to video offerings.
DANGEROUS CURVES
Without rehasing the plot which can be found in the other good reviews, THE CURVE is a disturbing film and mainly because the bad guys seem to have no moral foundation at all. Matthew Lillard in a devilishly demonic performance, finds it easy to just roll Randall Batinkoff off the cliff. As the movie progresses, his deliciously psychotic character does everything he can to be obnoxious, manipulative and heartless. Rarely has a character seemed so heartless and malicious as his buddy, Randall Batinkoff. He treats his girlfriend so badly you want him to be dead. Keri Russell becomes a chameleon, one never knows what to expect from this girl. And Michael Vartan as the focal "hero," Chris, seems to be innocently oblivious to the deadly mechanisms Lillard is orchestrating. Add Dana Delany as a psychiatrist trapped by her knowledge of how these vicious minds are working and you have a cast of unusually non-empathic characters.
What makes it work though are the several unexpected twists that come in the movie. Subtle hints are given throughout the film, but they still pack a wallop at the end.
THE CURVE is a sophisticated and tidy little thriller that should have received a little more notice, but it is a Hitchcockian tribute well done.
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