Arianna Moses
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
Robert J. Maxwell
Lawrence Fishburn is an ex agent of the CIA or whatever the company is called in this story -- the IRT, the BMT, or the IND. His skills are needed however by Frank Langella, who runs an industrial espionage outfit, aided in more ways than one by an agreeably coiffed and precisely groomed Ellen Barkin. There is a bit of wet work involved and nobody trusts anyone else except that the boss, Langella, trusts his chief of staff, Barkin. who later will aid in Langella's murder for the sake of power and pelf. The sexual scenes are a bit graphic and ignores racial sensibilities.The plot isn't anything special but two features of the movie are worth noting. First, the performances on the part of all the principles is just fine. Ellen Barkin is a surprise as a suave and elegant femme fatale. Fishburn is slow and considerate. (This is not an action movie.) And Frank Langella is outstanding in whatever role he takes on.The second admirable element is the stylization of both the sets and the dialog. It's not overdone, not inaccessible, but not entirely realistic either. It's done just enough, like a classic cheese soufflé.It presents a pretty lousy picture of humankind, Schopenhaueresque, but -- well.
SnoopyStyle
Nelson Crowe (Laurence Fishburne) is a CIA operative who was downsized after a dispute over a missing bribe of $50k in gold. Vic Grimes (Frank Langella) hires him for his company "The Toolshed" which blackmails and bribes for their corporate clients. Grimes and Margaret Wells (Ellen Barkin) are working to bribe State Supreme Court Judge Beach for their client Walter Curl. Wells comes to Crowe with a scheme to take over The Toolshed from Crowe.It's a lot of noir moody style. There is not much attention paid to provide any rooting interesting for the characters. It's a lot of cold distant characters and loads of dark hard-boiled cool style. It's so cool that there is no heat in it even with the sizzling Barkin. There is not enough excitement or tension. These are great actors and they almost make this work. The schemes, blackmail, brides and double-cross do get to be questionable. The problem is that I stop caring about halfway through.
elshikh4
Don't let its outwards fool you. It's not a pure thriller. It is one biting movie about love and trust in modern times, yet through the shape of a thriller. Scriptwriter (Ross Thomas) made a world of betrayal, where everybody scheming everybody dirtily and endlessly. And the survivor could be the one who loves honestly for love, the one who's immaculate and ready to face !Perhaps, the end would be disappointing; it even may turn the whole thing into pointless movie. However, it got to end the 2 malicious worldly-wise leads by the hand of inexperienced idiot who closes her eyes while shooting guns, all for making the deep bitter paradox, and for the sake of assuring how a couple like this would one way or another end each other, and how the true lover can win at last (even forcedly!), especially with this easy naive solution of random festival of killing, where the bad guys go to hell, and the kind one hits the jackpot, and wins the revenge (How poetic, and fabricated, this justice was!). Not to mention that it didn't care about the rest of the characters' fates, which ultimately stamped it with the "deficient" mark, and it is.Despite that, it managed somehow to embody the concept of (Bad Company) whereas it's not a "bad intelligence", no, it's more like "evil association" that must eat and eat till it eats itself in the end. The movie's title got its double meaning already, but the movie itself wasn't perfectly satisfying in the both lines, expressly the superficial one, so that's where all the bad feeling about the movie may come from.Director (Damian Harris) filled it with stylish style. Everything was beautiful and anesthetically colorful. The image was so soft, the cinematography and the editing were always smooth, the clothes seemed sharp, even the smallest details were fine. Something to attract, bewitch, and make the irony with all the putrefaction within; where nothing is filthy but the whole moralities. I loved the private agency's set; it looked like luxurious prison, scary company, or fake monastery. Though, I felt some coldness when it came to dealing with what was inside the characters, which left a clear negative effect on the acting. Ellen Barkin was awful, aside from a poorly written role, her face was so provocatively dead, and originally she's pathetically sexy to be that irresistible Femme Fatale !Yes, it's partly amusing, acridly satirical, with a nasty character, capturing the outrageous sense of the 1980s' and the 1990s' erotic thrillers. But it's not a brilliant thriller, inasmuch as a movie about utterly unfaithful world, where all would kill or be killed simply for money and power. So when I listen to its clever sad music score, I feel the real motive of the movie, and I feel sad because the movie, as a whole, remains semi-contrived and imperfect though.
smatysia
This film was really neither very good or very bad. Laurence Fishburne plays a laid-off CIA agent peddling his skills in the private sector. Ellen Barkin is pretty, as always, but she really didn't convince me in her part. The film is a study in crosses, double-crosses, and maybe triple-crosses. You can pass this one up, there's probably something better on.
