ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

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

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

HelenMary This film presents something of a dilemma, on the one hand it is an original, psychologically clever and rather twisted with a rather intriguing climax and on the other it is presented as a typical early 90s generic Hollywoodized Basinger/Gere cliché. It could be considered really good, Basinger's performance is actually quite brilliant and if she wasn't who she is but a "serious character actress" and wasn't so damn gorgeous and her character wasn't so clearly a temptress, she'd had probably got some plaudits for it. Uma Thurman equally did rather well although with a little more detachment but Richard Gere seemed remote and rather emotionless despite all the things that happened to him like he was in a trance the whole way through.Again, the plot, the actual idea is very clever. A woman (which of the two sisters you aren't really sure, or both) is either a brilliant pre-meditated killer, product of a nightmare upbringing and abusive marriage to a callous and rather self-centred misogynist in the form of the dark and horrible (well performed although somewhat typecast) Eric Roberts or she's just a sociopathic manipulative do-anything-to-survive chameleon... and this is played out well throughout the story. Kim Basinger is perfectly cast although playing very much characters she's played before - the blonde beauty, wearing red, the light catching her hair and baby-doll features flateringly etc etc. There's a brilliant bit where a colleague of Gere's is chastising him by saying that no woman is so beautiful as to make a man forget all reason and go against everything he stands for and then he sees Basinger standing in the doorway looking incredible and he just stops talking. Uma Thurman though a beautiful woman in her own right, is perfectly cast as the younger (you presume) sister who is constantly the ugly duckling the "caterpillar" compared to her butterfly sisters and even when she "turns into a butterfly" she is still a pale imitation of the original.It's difficult to review without giving anything away. There are aspects of this film which I found I predicted, could see coming, but I had no idea how the film would play out, what Gere (playing psychologist) would do, I mean of course the court outcome is to be expected, but that was almost a given in order to set up the totally unpredictable sequence of events and almost gave a false sense of security that you would know how the rest concludes. Typical early 90s fare including the obligatory sex scene, so scripted and paint by numbers (bare behind, bare nipple, dim lighting, sound effects etc) yet non-emotive or engaging and fairly unnecessary for the plot, the film is clichéd in most regards but there's also a dark aggressive and unusual aspect in that it deals with some issues a lot less palatable than most. Take away the clichés and some of the average made-for-TV male performances, and step back a bit and this is actually quite a good film, Basinger giving one of the performances of her life stepping out of her usual totally innocent and just eye-candy comfort zone and the which sister did what aspect you are left which is rather clever.

moonspinner55 Richard Gere and Kim Basinger reunite from 1986's mediocre "No Mercy" for this outlandish, just-as-shallow would-be murder mystery. Occasionally enjoyable, fruity concoction concerns psychiatrist Gere becoming involved with two sexy sisters who are hoping to formulate the perfect murder plot. Lots of story twists, each one more preposterous than the last, but with a slick production and a fine climax atop a lighthouse. Gere looks a bit ill-at-ease, but Basinger and Uma Thurman are both very good. Eric Roberts is eliminated early (a plus), but Keith David flounders in the hopeless role of the detective on the sisters' trail. For viewers in the requisite silly spirit, not too bad. ** from ****

mysteriesfan This movie has some promising elements. There is a premeditated murder plot with some intricacy, twists, and atmosphere. Kim Basinger is good playing a beautiful mystery woman with a troubled past and an exotic, violent illness ("pathological intoxication"). She conveys soft, placid (if overly simple) beauty one minute and psychotic rage the next, rivaling Catherine Zeta-Jones' in "Traffic" in her ability to turn memorably driven, tough, and hard-hearted on a dime.Uma Thurman looks and acts her slight part adequately enough as Basinger's delicate, spaced-out sister, a patient of Richard Gere. Paul Guilfoyle hams it up as a boorish criminal defense lawyer pal of Gere's. A police detective is tough, crude, and menacing, on cue (barking at Gere, "Don't yank my dick").But the film collapses under the weight of its many flaws. Gere is completely unconvincing as an "eminent psychiatrist." This has less to do with how he looks than how the movie presents him. He never says or does anything to credibly establish such a character. His attempts seem limited to occasionally speaking in jargon or hushed tones. He appears gullible and ignorant, as when it takes someone else's lecture to tip him off by chance to a colorful passage in Freud's work that is key to the criminal's scheme; even one of the plotters had expected Gere to be familiar with it. His supposedly joking answer to Basinger that as a psychiatrist he simply repeats, as a question, whichever last two words his patient speaks -- "'Your mother?'" -- hits a little too close to home. It is a truer description of how Gere comes across here than he thinks. Nor does the film give any background that might help explain the personal vulnerability that makes him such a dupe. The character is little more than a dim, steady facial expression and a resume.Thurman's character amounts to no more than a stagey plot gimmick. She never comes alive as a real person with a real relationship to anyone. The prosecutor is played with gruff style and no substance by Harris Yulin. He is given so little to say and do, and the character accomplishes so little, if anything, that I could not even find him listed in the credits.Even worse is the Eric Roberts character, Basinger's intense husband with mob ties. It is a tired, superficial, trying caricature that drags the movie down to the level of countless low-budget, rip-off "romantic thrillers." The unoriginal character and portrayal recall cinematic gems like "Play Murder for Me" and "Dead On" (both with Tracy Scoggins), "Tryst" (with Barbara Carrera), and probably dozens of other "abusive husband" exploitation flicks and TV show episodes (ala "Silk Stalkings").The weaknesses in the characters are only compounded by the weaknesses in the story. The plot flaws become so damaging and distracting that they sap entertainment value right out of the film. Watching the movie becomes like trying to drive a stick-shift down a road full of sink-holes (the film does feature a "ditch"). The abrupt, midstream shift in tone and pacing does not help.No explanation is ever offered for how the killer was able, in real time, to "hide" the murder weapon from the police - don't they search a crime scene? don't they have search warrants for other hiding places? And this is a plot point that drives most of the movie.We are supposed to believe that the prosecutor would proceed with a first degree murder trial not only without a murder weapon but without establishing the accused's motive, not even bothering to investigate until afterward exactly who was in line to receive a $4 million payout.We are supposed to believe that Gere can install himself on the psychiatric board responsible for evaluating the fitness for release from an institution of his own, indefinitely confined lover.We are supposed to believe -- and cheer -- that two outside professionals would arrive for an interview without introducing themselves or their reason for being there, and that another character would suddenly switch a lifelong allegiance, all so that Gere can stage an elaborate trick on someone he later acknowledges is mentally ill from childhood abuse, only apparently to arrange an even more haphazard, convoluted, and contrived manipulation later by behaving cavalierly and roughly to a patient.We are supposed to believe that murderers can walk out of mental institutions simply by switching clothes with someone else in a bathroom.We are supposed to believe that Gere would enlist a psychiatric patient to steal for him, without giving any warnings or taking any precautions to protect the young man from the vicious homicidal maniac with whom this puts him at odds (to compensate for this colossal error, the movie prematurely discloses the man's fate, creating a witness and another potential crime to prosecute and thus undercutting the suspense of whether the killer of the earlier victim will escape unpunished).We are supposed to believe, for the sake of a quick, shock-effect touch at the end, that, after two court trials had thoroughly publicized the events of the case, a character at its heart would appear to be recycling the exact same modus operandi for future use. And so on.The movie suffers badly under the relentless battering of these accumulated character and plot problems. Simply dismissing them with an air of glib pseudo-sophistication, all-knowing cynicism, empty flippancy, or lazy, unintelligent flicking of the "not helpful" button on any review honest enough to point them out is not a serious response. Nor do they simply disappear because the movie inserts some attractive visuals, such as of bridges and lighthouses, or ramps up dramatic music (somewhat frantically and mechanically, starting about halfway through). Any meaningful review has to come to terms not only with the elements of the movie that are promising and likable but with the substantial flaws that prevent it from being satisfying.

sol1218 ***MAJOR SPOILERS*** Treating a very disturbed young woman Diana Baylor, Uma Thruman, who seemed to have developed suicidal tendencies over the abusive treatment that she received by her father when she was a little girl. San Francisco psychiatrist Dr. Isaac Barr, Richard Gere, gets a surprise visit one afternoon by Diana's older sister Heather Evens, who's such a knockout that it causes Issac to forget his client's, Diana , illness.Heather, very concerned about her kid sister, tells Issac a number of things that Diana kept from him which included the very disturbing fact that she was constantly raped by her father. That may well have been responsible for his death by Diana setting him on fire when he was laying dead drunk and out cold in bed one evening. The movie then takes a sudden turn with Issac falling in love with Heather and, as if he completely forgot about her disturbed sister, stating to treat her for psychological problems as if she were his patient not his lover!It's during Issac' treatment, and affair, with Heather that he learns that she's married to a top San Francisco mobster named jimmy Evens, Eric Roberts. Jimmy is constantly abusing her and Issac fears that he'll eventually murder Heather for not giving Jimmy the almost slave-like attention that he demands. When you finally see Jimmy in the movie you begin to realize that it's Heather, not Jimmy, who's the abusive one. Not that Jimmy isn't a cold-blooded hoodlum he never once in the brief time you see him as much as lifts his hand on the very neurotic Heather. It' Jimmy who's the one that's very concerned about Heather's drinking that causes her to black out and go wacko making a complete spectacle of herself in public; as we later see in a scene with Jimmy and Heather having dinner in a local restaurant.It's not that long after were introduced to Jimmy that we see what a real flake Heather is. We discover that it's not Diana that needs the professional psychiatric help that Iassc can provide but her sister Heather! Not only is Heather trying to involve the Innocent and unsuspecting Issac in a plan to murder Jimmy, and collect a 4 million insurance policy on him, but have Iassc framed for it and! Even more sinister Heather is using her sister Diana as bait to do it!Overly complicated psychological thriller that's saved from total ruin by the acting of it's top stars Richard Gere Uma Thruman and the very sexy, and hot as a steam engine, Kim Bassinger. There's three great scenes in the movie "Final Analysis" that are more then worth the price of admission.****SPOILER**** The first being where Heather is being questioned, with Isaac present, in the mental institution that she's committed. Thinking those asking the questions are members of the District Attorney's office and having Diana show up with the "evidence" ,that Heather planted, to frame Isaac for her husbands murder. Heather ends up getting the surprise of her life, when for some reason Diana didn't deliver the goods, where she completely changes her demeanor and loses it. Going from a calm and totally in control of the situation individual into a dangerously wild and crazy lunatic in just a matter of seconds! That scene in itself should have earned Kim Basinger an Academy Award nomination for best actress.There's an even better scene in the movie later on when Heather, changing places with Diana in prison, escapes and tries to get in touch with Det. Higgens, Keith David, in order to give him the murder weapon that she used to kill her husbands with Isaac's fingerprints on it. Only to have Issac grab the murder weapon, a steel dumbbell, before Higgins got it making it totally unless as evidence. The best part of the movie is saved for last with both Iassc and Det. Higgins, who finally realized that it was Heather not Iassc who murdered Jimmy, having it out with the the now totally crazed Heather on top of a dangerously damaged lighthouse, off the Golden Gate Bridge, during a violent and murderous downpour. That scene was as good,if not better, as anything you would see in an Alfred Hitchcock psychological thriller.