Retro Movie Review: Color of Night
If there's one movie that's slipped under the radar, it's Color of Night, an under-rated erotic thriller that has a lot going for it, both good and bad. Call this a "mixed review" that leans toward recommendation, albeit cautiously.
Bruce Willis stars as Doctor Bill Capa, a mental health therapist who speaks harshly to a patient in the film's prologue, only to see her respond with a suicidal leap from his skyscraper office window. Devastated, Capa goes to Los Angeles (it's unclear whether he's moving there or merely on vacation) to stay at his friend's house. The friend is also a mental health therapist, and invites Capa to sit in on a group therapy session. It seems that, after finding fame and fortune by authoring a best-selling self-help book, the friend has attracted some negative attention, and he suspects that the death threats are coming from someone in the group therapy sessions -- he's just not sure who it is.
Sure enough, the friend is murdered early on in the film, and even though there is a police detective on the case, Capa finds himself leading his own investigation -- as well as becoming the mysterious killer's next target -- when he takes over the friend's group therapy sessions.
Running parallel to this story is Capa's romance with Rose, a woman he meets in a seemingly random fender-bender. This romance shares more or less equal screen time with the murder mystery, and anybody who thinks the two story-lines will remain unrelated doesn't know a single thing about movies.
The critics hated Color of Night with a passion; it received almost unanimously negative reviews, and even swept the 1994 Golden Raspberry Awards (the intentionally ironic awards that go to bad movies). I find this monumentally unfair. Color of Night is indeed a flawed film -- and I'll get to those flaws in a moment -- but it also has a lot to offer.
First of all, the mystery itself is pretty good. The story earns its twists as it goes along -- meaning that the twists aren't "unfair," random surprises meant to mess with the audience's minds, but rather carefully plotted out. I like how writers Billy Ray and Matthew Chapman skillfully bounce our suspicion from one of Capa's patients to the next, until every one of them seems like an equally likely candidate to be the murderer. This, quite simply, is exactly what a murder mystery is supposed to do, and the critics somehow overlooked how well Chapman and Ray do it.
The best thing about Color of Night, however, is its supporting characters; Chapman and Ray populate their story with a group of interesting characters who rarely (it would be inaccurate to say "never") go over the top. And what a great cast of character actors to play these people! Ya got Brad Dourif as a buttoned-down tax attorney, Kevin J. O'Connor as an artist with a screw loose, Lance Henriksen as a grief-stricken ex-cop, Ruben Blades as the comic relief police detective, and Scott Bakula as Capa's doomed best friend, and while none of these may be marquee-topping names, they are, quite simply, some of the best character actors in the business. Any one of these guys could sleep-walk their way through a movie and still do a good performance, but here they bring their A-game. These characters are perfectly cast and flawlessly performed.
However, I said that the movie is flawed, and I wasn't lying. If the filmmakers had stuck with the murder mystery, and the great scenes with the therapy group, it would have been a hands-down good movie. But then there's that romance storyline, where everything just goes kaflooey. Honestly, the romance goes wrong on every level. As the love interest Rose, Jane March is a halfway decent actress -- and no, that's not meant as understatement, that's meant as a candid appraisal of her acting ability: halfway decent. Her physical looks are an equally mixed bag. Yes, from the neck down, she's a knock-out, but her face is . . . well . . . pixie-like. Honestly, there's a girl-like quality to her face, yes (told that Capa and Rose met because of a fender-bender, a cop observes "she's awfully young to be fending benders") but there's also something almost inhuman about it as well. Frankly, her face is sometimes just disturbing, even when it's not meant to be. Now, I'm sorry if it offends you that I'm reviewing a film based partially on the lead actress's looks, but come on. March is paraded around this film as almost pure eye candy, and if that is so clearly her intended role, then let's not shy away from discussing it.
Yet even if they had cast a better-looking, more talented actress in the role of Rose, the romance still wouldn't work, mostly, but not only, because the romance scenes are just plain boring. The dialogue in these scenes is wildly uneven, ranging from honestly clever to yawn-inducingly mundane. And the sex scenes between Capa and Rose are so numerous, and so extended -- uh, let me change my wording there, so numerous and so lengthy -- oh, nevermind -- that even the voyeuristic fun of seeing nudity on screen turns into an unpleasant mixture of awkwardness and boredom.
Worst of all, these romance scenes are narrated by Capa, in cliche-ridden, hopelessly hokey "film noir" style. Oddly, the filmmakers chose to have Capa narrate the scenes on-screen, which, trust me, is a lot weirder than the idea sounds. The narration really flummoxes me as a viewer. I can't help wonder why the filmmakers made this odd choice, and my only conclusion is that they just didn't feel that it was "film noir"y enough, and wanted to add an old-fashioned touch. The narration (which fortunately only occurs during the romance scenes, not during the other storyline) really, really doesn't work.
Yet all in all . . . . this is a good movie. Flawed, yes. Awkward at times, yes. But as I said, the mystery is pretty good, and the characters as played by Blades, Dourif, Henriksen, etc., are a real treat.
P.S. A bit of movie history: Bruce Willis had key roles in no less than four major motion pictures released in 1994 -- a rarity for a modern-day movie star. Also rare for a mainstream movie star, Willis filmed full-frontal nude scenes for two of those movies. The first, Color of Night, was universally panned by critics, and nominated for multiple Golden Razzies. The other, Pulp Fiction, was nominated for several Oscars, and became a box office smash and a cultural phenomenon. All of the clear shots of Willis's willie were edited out of both films before release, and never re-appeared in any subsequent director's cuts or re-releases -- despite Willis's loud and very public protests to the edits. (He pointed out the discrepancy that Color of Night features a ton of female nudity, and Pulp Fiction a ton of violence, yet both films managed to keep their R rating, while only a single shot of male genitalia motivated the ratings board to threaten both movies with the more adult rating of NC-17). In the wake of the runaway success of Pulp Fiction, Willis's three other 1994 films -- Color of Night, Nobody's Fool, and North -- have since been more or less forgotten by the general public.
Bruce Willis stars as Doctor Bill Capa, a mental health therapist who speaks harshly to a patient in the film's prologue, only to see her respond with a suicidal leap from his skyscraper office window. Devastated, Capa goes to Los Angeles (it's unclear whether he's moving there or merely on vacation) to stay at his friend's house. The friend is also a mental health therapist, and invites Capa to sit in on a group therapy session. It seems that, after finding fame and fortune by authoring a best-selling self-help book, the friend has attracted some negative attention, and he suspects that the death threats are coming from someone in the group therapy sessions -- he's just not sure who it is.
Sure enough, the friend is murdered early on in the film, and even though there is a police detective on the case, Capa finds himself leading his own investigation -- as well as becoming the mysterious killer's next target -- when he takes over the friend's group therapy sessions.
Running parallel to this story is Capa's romance with Rose, a woman he meets in a seemingly random fender-bender. This romance shares more or less equal screen time with the murder mystery, and anybody who thinks the two story-lines will remain unrelated doesn't know a single thing about movies.
The critics hated Color of Night with a passion; it received almost unanimously negative reviews, and even swept the 1994 Golden Raspberry Awards (the intentionally ironic awards that go to bad movies). I find this monumentally unfair. Color of Night is indeed a flawed film -- and I'll get to those flaws in a moment -- but it also has a lot to offer.
First of all, the mystery itself is pretty good. The story earns its twists as it goes along -- meaning that the twists aren't "unfair," random surprises meant to mess with the audience's minds, but rather carefully plotted out. I like how writers Billy Ray and Matthew Chapman skillfully bounce our suspicion from one of Capa's patients to the next, until every one of them seems like an equally likely candidate to be the murderer. This, quite simply, is exactly what a murder mystery is supposed to do, and the critics somehow overlooked how well Chapman and Ray do it.
The best thing about Color of Night, however, is its supporting characters; Chapman and Ray populate their story with a group of interesting characters who rarely (it would be inaccurate to say "never") go over the top. And what a great cast of character actors to play these people! Ya got Brad Dourif as a buttoned-down tax attorney, Kevin J. O'Connor as an artist with a screw loose, Lance Henriksen as a grief-stricken ex-cop, Ruben Blades as the comic relief police detective, and Scott Bakula as Capa's doomed best friend, and while none of these may be marquee-topping names, they are, quite simply, some of the best character actors in the business. Any one of these guys could sleep-walk their way through a movie and still do a good performance, but here they bring their A-game. These characters are perfectly cast and flawlessly performed.
However, I said that the movie is flawed, and I wasn't lying. If the filmmakers had stuck with the murder mystery, and the great scenes with the therapy group, it would have been a hands-down good movie. But then there's that romance storyline, where everything just goes kaflooey. Honestly, the romance goes wrong on every level. As the love interest Rose, Jane March is a halfway decent actress -- and no, that's not meant as understatement, that's meant as a candid appraisal of her acting ability: halfway decent. Her physical looks are an equally mixed bag. Yes, from the neck down, she's a knock-out, but her face is . . . well . . . pixie-like. Honestly, there's a girl-like quality to her face, yes (told that Capa and Rose met because of a fender-bender, a cop observes "she's awfully young to be fending benders") but there's also something almost inhuman about it as well. Frankly, her face is sometimes just disturbing, even when it's not meant to be. Now, I'm sorry if it offends you that I'm reviewing a film based partially on the lead actress's looks, but come on. March is paraded around this film as almost pure eye candy, and if that is so clearly her intended role, then let's not shy away from discussing it.
Yet even if they had cast a better-looking, more talented actress in the role of Rose, the romance still wouldn't work, mostly, but not only, because the romance scenes are just plain boring. The dialogue in these scenes is wildly uneven, ranging from honestly clever to yawn-inducingly mundane. And the sex scenes between Capa and Rose are so numerous, and so extended -- uh, let me change my wording there, so numerous and so lengthy -- oh, nevermind -- that even the voyeuristic fun of seeing nudity on screen turns into an unpleasant mixture of awkwardness and boredom.
Worst of all, these romance scenes are narrated by Capa, in cliche-ridden, hopelessly hokey "film noir" style. Oddly, the filmmakers chose to have Capa narrate the scenes on-screen, which, trust me, is a lot weirder than the idea sounds. The narration really flummoxes me as a viewer. I can't help wonder why the filmmakers made this odd choice, and my only conclusion is that they just didn't feel that it was "film noir"y enough, and wanted to add an old-fashioned touch. The narration (which fortunately only occurs during the romance scenes, not during the other storyline) really, really doesn't work.
Yet all in all . . . . this is a good movie. Flawed, yes. Awkward at times, yes. But as I said, the mystery is pretty good, and the characters as played by Blades, Dourif, Henriksen, etc., are a real treat.
P.S. A bit of movie history: Bruce Willis had key roles in no less than four major motion pictures released in 1994 -- a rarity for a modern-day movie star. Also rare for a mainstream movie star, Willis filmed full-frontal nude scenes for two of those movies. The first, Color of Night, was universally panned by critics, and nominated for multiple Golden Razzies. The other, Pulp Fiction, was nominated for several Oscars, and became a box office smash and a cultural phenomenon. All of the clear shots of Willis's willie were edited out of both films before release, and never re-appeared in any subsequent director's cuts or re-releases -- despite Willis's loud and very public protests to the edits. (He pointed out the discrepancy that Color of Night features a ton of female nudity, and Pulp Fiction a ton of violence, yet both films managed to keep their R rating, while only a single shot of male genitalia motivated the ratings board to threaten both movies with the more adult rating of NC-17). In the wake of the runaway success of Pulp Fiction, Willis's three other 1994 films -- Color of Night, Nobody's Fool, and North -- have since been more or less forgotten by the general public.
posted by Movie Man at
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