The Bedroom Window
Steve Guttenberg stars as Terry Lambert, a man who tempts fate by having an affair with his boss's wife (Isabelle Huppert). When she witnesses an attempted murder from his apartment, he agrees to report it in an attempt to keep their liasion a secret. But he soon becomes a suspect, and his troubles snowball into a Hitchcockian web of crime and duplicity.
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Unforgiven - Stitch
How bad can it be? Let me count the ways. But first, just know at least one IMDB comment is accurate—the cinematography is very very good. Which is rather a shame because otherwise a poor print would have given me some excuse for terminating an interminable miasma of abysmal acting. Maybe I hung on grimly hoping for the nasty to polish off the whole sorry lot. Sorry. The ending is as predictable as Elizabeth McGovern’s shower shot. Which isn’t. Exciting, that is.
Director Curtis Hanson went on to co-write and direct L.A. Confidential, cinema I enjoyed immensely. The key is co-wrote; here he had no help with the screen play and it shows. What makes it more distressing is that the original novel’s plot premise is innovative. In fact, maybe his direction in the main is not all that bad. It’s the hackneyed contrivances he inserts to maintain some semblance of plausibility that will set your teeth on edge. Amateur hour.
I’ve saved the worst for last. It’s hard to say who deserves the biggest raspberry but we have to give it to Guttenberg: he has most of the screen time. From scene one, his persona is pathetic. There’s a weak attempt to brace him up for the climax but no amount of black jacket can stiffen this sad twerp. Aiding and abetting a femme fatale fiasco is Isabelle Huppert. Isabelle has done some credible work but here she is either miscast or catching a plane next morning.
Which brings us to Elizabeth McGovern. I give her credit; at times I’d swear she was nudging Stevie to brace up and pretend testosterone. But the dialogue of the one love scene between them is so impossibly trite as to defeat any serious intent. The villain is actually decently cast (Brad Greenquist). Watch for the patented courtroom stare...this and the simplistic 'twist' really deserve inditement. Along with the ADA. By this time, though, we’re comatose.
Please watch it. Then at least I can say you got suckered in too. But spare the children.An Exciting Tense Thriller - c4th
The Bedroom Window is a tense thriller that carries a sexy erotic air despite a minimal use of nudity. It provides an exciting journey involving murder, incorrect suspicions, deception and misguided schemes.
Terry Lambert (Steve Guttenberg) initiates an affair with his boss’s wife (Isabelle Huppert). During their first late night rendezvous at Terry’s apartment, she witnesses an assault and scares off the perpetrator before his attack becomes deadly. To keep their affair secret, Terry reports the crime as if he were the witness. Their little deception seems harmless until the case unexpectedly goes to court. During cross examination, Terry’s testimony is discredited. This promotes him to the position of prime suspect not just for the assault but for a series of related murders. With help from an unlikely source, he contrives an elaborate and risky stratagem to prove his innocence but as it plays out, the two are placed in more and more danger.
It sounds convoluted but thanks to superb directing by Curtis Hanson (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, L.A. Confidential), it all works. The movie possesses an ironic undercurrent. Many tense moments arise in situations where Terry may get caught in a lie. By the end of the movie we realize getting caught as a liar would have prevented being suspected as a murderer and would have been the best thing that could have happened to him.
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Unforgiven - Stitch
How bad can it be? Let me count the ways. But first, just know at least one IMDB comment is accurate—the cinematography is very very good. Which is rather a shame because otherwise a poor print would have given me some excuse for terminating an interminable ...An Exciting Tense Thriller - c4th
The Bedroom Window is a tense thriller that carries a sexy erotic air despite a minimal use of nudity. It provides an exciting journey involving murder, incorrect suspicions, deception and misguided schemes.
Terry Lambert (Steve Guttenberg) initiates ...