Sea of Love (1989)
Directed by Harold Becker
Seen-it-all New York detective Frank Keller is unsettled - he has done twenty years on the force and could retire, and he hasn't come to terms with his wife leaving him for a colleague. Joining up with an officer from another part of town to investigate a series of murders linked by the lonely hearts columns he finds he is getting seriously and possibly dangerously involved with Helen, one of the main suspects.
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What critics compared Sea of Love to
Screenwriter Ezsterhas really doesn't do anything well: there's no sense of authentic cop milieu (which "Sea of Love" had in spades) and the dialogue is all generic; there's no genuine wit and the relationships aren't sharply imagined.
Announcing the big-budget erotic thriller cycle that peaked with Basic Instinct, Sea of Love has its Cinemax lapses in taste (Helen's grocery store seduction is cheesy beyond the pale), but most films of the genre lack sophistication from which to lapse.
Julia Roberts took this film off, but Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin last seen together 18 years ago, performing urgent stand-up sex in Sea of Love are on board for star wattage and the nostalgia factor.
The opportunity to rekindle Sea of Love sparks between the reunited Barkin and Pacino is wasted, the seduction being left to Matt Damon's fumbling Linus.
Sea of Love is unrestrained and completely hypnotic; thanks Steven Soderbergh for bringing Barkin and Pacino back together Ocean’s Thirteen; I know officially understand.
Livingston Dell (Eddie Jemison) can't corrupt a card game to save his life and Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon) insists he can seduce Bank's assistant, Abigail Sponder (Ellen Barkin, Pacino's "Sea of Love" costar), wearing a prosthetic nose that makes him look like Crispin Glover.
As for Pacino (Barkin's "Sea of Love" partner many moons ago) he's every bit the bronzed, manicured bully.
Pacino and fellow newcomer Ellen Barkin, in their unexpected and frankly undesired post- Sea of Love reunion have the same sort of lazy fun that everybody else had in the first two except for Catherine Zeta-Jones in Twelve, and that's either your bag or it isn't.