Last year, between the two of us, we watched an average of 317 movies.
This year our goal is to top that by watching at least one a day.
And as an extra special torture, we've decided to write about all of them.

22 August 2008

Someone to Watch Over Me, dir. Ridley Scott (1987)

STEVE says:
More and more, I'm convinced by this project that I've lived with some sort of bizarre Total Recall implanted memory for the first 30-odd years of my life. I had seen Someone to Watch Over Me before, and I remembered it as being a good movie, a suspenseful neo-noir with a dash of sex... Sadly, none of that was to be the case this time around.

In my memory, Mimi Rogers witnesses a murder and Tom Berenger is assigned to protect her. During the course of this, the murderer makes several attempts on her life, as she and Berenger become romantically linked, therefore compromising his ability to protect her. In the broadest sense, that's pretty much what happens. But I remembered nothing about Berenger having a wife and kid, nothing about the underdevelopment of the Berenger/Rogers relationship, and nothing about the drawn out stretches of "drama" between the attempts on Rogers' life. I did remember the final confrontation between Berenger and the killer taking place at a swanky indoor pool, but it turns out that was the inciting incident where Rogers witnesses the killer killing her friend, and Berenger wasn't yet involved, so only half points for remembering that.

Had this been a Movie of the Week, or some direct-to-video thing, it might not have been so bad. Replace Berenger with Michael Nouri (or, you know, not), up the skin quotient, and you got yourself a Cinemax fave. But this is a Ridley Scott movie. This followed Legend, Blade Runner, Alien and The Duellists. Why would he lower himself to this level of late-night melodrama? Sad, really.

1.5/5

NIKKI says:
Amen to all that. It was just lame, and it felt like it was going to be from the opening few minutes. It all felt really Andrew Stevens-y. I was like Steve -- this is Ridley Scott? Is it because people were just so coked up in the '80s? It made very little sense, and the character development was just so poor as to be non-existent. I kinda spent the last two thirds just waiting for it all to be over with. And I'm sorry but whoever cast Mimi Rogers as this irresistible, beautiful femme fatale was doing more coke than anyone else because anyone of sound mind can see Lorraine Bracco is far hotter.

1/5