Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Matthew Stechel Starts out with Robert Patrick as a struggling writer trying to crank out a novel his agent can sell--ends up becoming overly concerned with the woman living across the way from him whom he can hear getting beat up at night....but this just turns out to be the first of many mistaken impressions on Patrick's part. It turns out that this woman who's played by Teri Hatcher is an actress who like Patrick is also struggling to get her career up and running...as the two characters pursue success (and each other) they kind of become increasingly odd in their behavior. Patrick starts the movie seemingly meek and mild mannered and Hatcher seems to be rather commandeering when they first start interacting with one another....eventually this dynamic reverses, and it does so kind of abruptly---the idea i think was that in success, Patrick's character ends up becoming more and more dominant--there's a couple of references during the course of the movie directed at Patrick's character to "uncage the animal inside" which he seems to take to heart. Anyways in the blink of an eye--Patrick's novel after some adjusting is eventually released and successful enough that a studio wants to buy the movie rights and his agent negotiates it so that he writes the screenplay himself. Hatcher decides that she wants to be the leading actress in the screenplay based on the book (the book was inspired by her, so in essence she'd be playing herself or at least Patrick's lightly fictionalized version of her) This is where the movie falls off the tracks as Patrick almost immediately gets incredibly angry at this idea, and well things escalate from there to the point where things stop making sense. The ending kind of teases us with the idea that Patrick had been down this road before, there's a character who appears at the very beginning who appears again at the very end, and his reappearance made me wonder if he was real or imaginary, but it really doesn't matter because nothing that happens in those last 15-20 minutes fits with the stuff that happened in the first hour or so...except that that that reappearance of the character at the end does kind of suggest that this had all happened before (and presumably will happen again...so maybe it fits too well?) i'm not sure i can recommend this...there's a lot of overheated dialog, and a couple of sex scenes between Patrick and Hatcher that features plenty of nudity and that's all well and good--- I was with the movie the whole way, but it kind of lost me once Patrick started getting irrational and angry and while that may have been the point (The Cool Surface maybe referring to what we show people on the outside versus what's actually happening underneath???) I'm not sure it was one that was well made by the movie.

SnoopyStyle Jarvis Scott (Robert Patrick) returns to home in L.A. after finish writing his novel in isolation. His girlfriend committed suicide which affected his writing. His editor Chazz Stone (Matt McCoy) hates the new book. He becomes invested in his neighbors' volatile relationship. He writes a new book with him and his neighbor Dani Payson (Teri Hatcher) as the leads. Dani reveals the abusive relationship is actually a rehearsal for a play. Jarvis starts dating Dani but she keeps pushing him to the edge.This is a rather sad and boring erotic thriller. It has no thrills to speak of. The erotica comes from Teri Hatcher. I don't know if they're real. They are spectacular but they're not enough to make a bad movie good. The actors may be willing but nothing else is. The script is horribly boring. The production is ripped out of every bad 90s late night cable movie.

xsnowangelx After watching 'The Cool Surface', I must say I walked away from it with mixed feelings. It is a strange film. The positive- Robert Patrick's haunting portrayal of a struggling writer turned homicidal maniac. You really did feel for his character several times during the picture. The plot, if you can weed through the constant sex scenes, is worth looking for. The negative- Teri Hatcher was replace-able as well as forgettable as the part of the struggling actress. The movie had it's cheesy moments- Teri Hatcher's confessions of "I want to act until my heart stops beating". But such things are overlook-able. I put in the movie, expecting for it to get tired. But overall, I was surprised to find that I ended up quite liking it.

i_love_john_jay_doggett Robert Patrick is very hot in this film. Nice twists of plot but who really cares when you can view for eye candy. He is as always a superb actor, but baby, he sets the screen on fire in this one with his sexuality alone!