This movie is of most interest, at least to me, for where it sits in the career choices of actress Sharon Stone. One can see certain characteristics, thematic links, between Year of The Gun, Total Recall, Basic Instinct. In all three she is a woman mysterious, alluring, highly dangerous. We see her taking photographs in a situation that puts her in such danger, early on in this movie, that one thinks the character she plays must be mad. Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct was also a psycho obsessed with her work, happy to use anyone to get it done. Here her character, Allison ('too dumb and too dangerous to be around') acts like she is invincible, constantly pushing her luck. She might have a deathwish (in Basic Instinct she is more of an angel of death). And Total Recall? Well, that same crazed look in the eye, at any rate.
Too bad that of the three films, this one is the weakest. It does have a certain contemporary relevance: the lefty student activism and faculty provocateurs. "I don't advise. This isn't Berkeley. I don't play the guru. I try to teach." So says the university lecturer (John Pankow) caught up, as is everyone to some degree, with the Red Brigades. Protagonist David (Andrew McCarthy) is a journalist writing a book, secretive about its contents, who is caught in crossfire when he is implicated as a threat/collaborator by both sides, the leftist activists and the state. A former 'knee-jerk liberal', back in his college days. What exactly is he now? What exactly is his book meant to be, potboiler, reportage, memoir? And what exactly is this movie really about?
For there's more/ There's also the story involving Valeria Golino, with whom McCarthy is having an affair, a custody battle, a dangerous ex-partner, and lecturer Pankow keeping a beady eye on all of it. In one peculiar scene, Golino is shown putting lipstick on her nipples and then going to bed with a man - her ex-, I think - under a red lightbulb. Add to that a bit where David is narrating in his own head and not satisfied with the results, and the weird echoes of Annie Hall and Manhattan only serve to show how oddly cluttered this film is. What intrigue there is feels forced rather than earned. We don't really know who anyone is in this movie, which means it needs a tighter focus on one character, such as David (McCarthy). If only he and the others were recognisable.
Another problem is the acting which is basically weak. This is Stone not at her best. McCarthy is a weak screen presence, better in an ensemble comedy such as Pretty in Pink. Pankow is good. Golino gets by on her gorgeousness (she's frequently nude; Stone not, alas). I mentioned those Woody Allen echoes, which may just be my constellation, but a film about an American reporter in Rome has to reek of Roman Holiday, and in a way I'm also reminded of Casablanca. And all these other movies mentioned are far stronger because they know what they're about. This one opens like it's going to be a hard-headed exploration of political terrorism, the structure of the organisation, but then it just gets lost in the crowds.
I'll give it credit, it's good enough to persuade me I'm looking at the 1970s, and it's encouraging to see people rightly getting furious at an entitled photojournalist who thinks she can sashay up and photograph anyone at any time (if only millennials could be taught some discretion), but the scenes of civic unrest, violence, lumpy sexuality, general confusion, and the least contemporary of all the performances (Stone - too '90s) ultimately add up to a muddled clunker.
