The Last Seduction

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source: The Last Seduction

Director John Dahl's stylish film noir `Red Rock West' couldn't find a distributor, played on cable television and then was picked up by a San Francisco moviehouse where it set attendance records. If you think its subsequent success taught Hollywood suits anything, you just aren't cut out for the movie business. With an even better script by Steve Barancik, Dahl found the ideal lead to play the very fatale femme of `The Last Seduction.' Linda Fiorentino, someone else who hasn't been well served by Hollywood, gave one of the great performances of the 1990s as Bridget/Wendy. Her no-holds-barred potrayal perfectly matched Barancik's uncompromising writing. Fiorentino deserved an Oscar, but didn't qualify because this film also went straight to cable before finding a distributor and becoming a hit. Limited resources can focus the mind. Dahl isn't the most sweepingly visual of directors, but he can provide the occasional arresting scene. With a small but outstanding cast of what were then B-list actors, everyday settings and a tiny budget, the director kept `The Last Seduction' focused on the basics needed to make this genre work. Without revealing too much of the plot, Bridget is on the lam after stealing $700,000 in drug proceeds from her sleazy, abusive husband, well played by Bill Pullman just before he became a good-guy leading man. The late great J.T. Walsh is smooth as a silk suit as Bridget's attorney, who appreciates a cold-hearted bitch. Bill Nunn does yeoman work as the detective on her trail. But the key to this sort of black widow movie is a willing sap, and Peter Berg makes one of the best. A lean slice of beecake, he's back in his small town after a disastrous fling in the big city, that is, Buffalo. He's looking to get out again, and when Bridget breezes into the local shot-and-beer joint with her `city trash' attitude, he's done for. As another reviewer chooses to emphasize, with her skinny legs and barely pubescent, pancake-flat chest Linda Fiorentino is the scrawniest femme fatale in the history of film noir. But that just makes her and her character's progress more amusing. Like Bridget, Fiorentino gets over on attitude more than pulchritude. While Fiorentino's physique won't make women viewers jealous, many respond enthusiastically to the sex scene where Bridget rides Berg's Mike against a fence behind the bar. In fact, there's hardly a standard bedroom scene: most of the sex is of the right-now kind. And while both seem to enjoy themselves a lot, Bridget is clearly in control, emotionally and physically. In recent years, we've gotten used to zaftig super-women like Xena throwing men around. But perhaps not since the heyday of Diana Rigg on `The Avengers' has there been a thin, flat-chested woman who dominates males like Linda Fiorentino takes care of business here. Bridget certainly isn't a role model, but her enthusiasm for her work is infectious. This movie also has the courage of its convictions. If it seems amoral, well just about every Arnold Schwartzenegger movie celebrates massive killing by so-called `good guys.' The only difference between this movie and Hollywood's standard murderous agit-prop is that `The Last Seduction' has a brain. Unfortunately, great work doesn't always bring great rewards. Fiorentino was good in Kevin Smith's ramshackle low-budget `Dogma,' only to be dissed by the director. She was one of the best elements of the equally ramshackle but costly `Men in Black,' only to be booted from the sequel for more compliant girls. (In Hollywood's homoerotic subtext, `buddy movie' means no women allowed.) Fiorentino did hook up aagin with John Dahl in the highly forgettable `Unforgettable,' weighed down by a bigger budget, second-rate script and Ray Liotta. Both the director and his leading lady are still in play, though, so we can hope they will find other siutations worthy of their talents. And if not, Linda Fiorentino makes `The Last Seduction' unforgettable.

When a critic views a film that is different from most of the films they have to see, they often give it an undeserved rave review. That is what happened with this piece of garbage. This is one of the worst films ever made. There is not a single character that is sympathetic (and we meet quite a few), the story makes very little sense, the femme fatale has to be the most unlikable such character ever, yet she is able to make everyone do her bidding, and nobody in the film reacts as normal people do. There is absolutely no reason for Mike, the main male character that Wendy, the femme fatale, meets in a bar to love or even like Wendy, but we have to accept his behavior to accept the movie. But you can't accept his fondness for Wendy at all, especially the more he discovers about her. This movie is 2 hours that I will never get back. Don't believe the hype. Sitting in your bedroom contemplating your 4 walls is time better spent. Make no mistake--this is unadulterated crap which made me realize just how good film noirs of the 40's and 50's were. They had well-defined characters and a story worth following. This film has nothing!

"The Last Seduction" was produced with theatrical distribution in mind, but it premiered on cable TV, thereby ensuring that Linda Fiorentino's sultry performance--the most acclaimed by a female in 1994--would be disqualified for Oscar consideration. Too bad. She would likely have claimed the prize for her smolderingly sexy turn as a promiscuous man killer. Other than Fiorentino, this film is strictly OK, a modern R-rated update of the kind of 1940's melodramas that offered Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Barbara Stanwyck some of their meatiest roles.

Director John Dahl presents modern Film-Noir. A strong minded woman(Linda Fiorentino)runs away with her husband's(Bill Pullman)profits from a drug deal leaving him to face his loan shark. She finds another town and another man(Peter Berg)to manipulate. Interesting cat and mouse plot with some spontaneous sex thrown in. The combustible kind! It is doubtful you would fall asleep after this one kicks into gear. The sultry Fiorentino knows the ways to be wicked. J.T. Walsh is also notable. Can you say sizzle?

I love this film. It's an absolute breath of fresh air. Those who can't deal with the "immorality" of this film are drunk on Hollywood happy-ending sap and are blind to the realities of human nature. Guess what, in real life, more often than not, the bad guys don't get punished. If movies about the white hats winning in the end make you feel better about the reality of what usually happens in life, more power to you. How many times have we cheered on a bad guy despite ourselves, even though we know he's bad, just because he's so charming and sexy? Why not the same of a woman? She's evil, she's manipulative, she gets what she wants. I love it. Would I want to meet someone like this in real life? Of course not. Do I find her behavior acceptable? Of course not, it's absolutely reprehensible. But this is a movie, it's entertainment, and the world is already full of bad-guys-get-it-in-the-end fantasies, orgies of violence that are only excused by the fact that the person being destroyed is a "bad guy" - why can't I relish in a fantasy of a brilliant and amoral woman triumphing over the stupid and trusting (and yes, people can really be that stupid, even smart people.) We want to believe in the essential goodness of mankind, but unfortunately, in the real world as in this movie, villains often capitalize on that need to believe for their own benefit. Linda Fiorentino is absolutely amazing in this movie, I really wish she would get more work, her talents are completely underutilized. Sexy, smart, and in control. Bill Pullman is his usual wonderful self, and there are many other excellent supporting performances from the likes of J.T. Walsh (RIP) and Peter Berg.

I loved this one because I couldn't get over the heights of carnality and the depths of sociopathic evil the characters were capable of achieving. Linda Fiorentino played perhaps the most despicably rotten, heartless, conniving, using bitch I've ever had the pleasure of watching. Pullman was great as the reaper of retribution intent on giving evil for evil. Peter Berg may have stolen the show with his total inability to say no to his own destruction. It was hard to believe the abyss of stupidity these 2 dopes had the capacity to plumb. Guess that's what happens when the little head takes over the thought processes for the big head, eh? The picture started out a little slow but developed into a real blowout with a jaw dropping finale. All the folks got exactly what they deserved. All of them.

Fiorentino has a field day as one of the most despicable women ever to be featured in a film. Her character is tough, self-centered, mean-spirited, and sexy femme fatale who absconds with her husband's drug money and tries to get her ninny of a boyfriend to kill him. The plot is quite contrived and the characters bear no resemblance to real people, with Fiorentino appearing to be a genius in a world of dim-witted men. The acting is pretty good. Berg is likable as Fiorentino's boyfriend, a decent fellow who has to balance his hormones with his morality. Pullman seems to be having fun playing the betrayed spouse. The score sets the right mood.

Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino) steals money that she and her husband (Bill Pullman) got from selling drugs, heads upstate and slowly works chump Mike (Peter Berg) into killing hubby. This is a very familiar tale, dating back to at least "Double Indemnity," and used again in the following year's morbidly humorous "To Die For." The main problem with this movie is how stupid everyone is; they were all stupid in "To Die For" too, but this isn't a comedy. Bridget is usually considered to be evil. She's not really. She just wants to get a lot of money, but has no foresight to come up with a viable plan. For example, she comes up with one of the most banal cover names possible (Wendy Kroy, New York spelled backwards). And she keeps doing these kind of things throughout, so the only way to get out of the corner is to murder. But Mike has really got her beat in the lack-of-brains department. He first meets her in a bar, where she tries to blow him off. But he persists. Why? She's a skinny, flat-chested, coarse-voiced shrew. A really good-looking guy like that could surely get a nicer, better-looking woman, but he wants Bridget, for no obvious reason. When they do start their (purely physical) "relationship," he gets distressed that she's so cold and distant. She's emotionally unavailable, but he keeps pursuing, for no other reason than furthering the mundane plot. He should have gotten out when he had the chance; when the finale arrives, we're not sure whether we pity him or whether we're annoyed by him. I'm sure heartless women like Bridget could exist in the real world, but I'm also sure that they'd have to be a lot smarter. Her plan only succeeds because everyone else is even more stupid than she is. This movie, in the end, is annoyingly implausible.