Sliver (1993)
Directed by Phillip Noyce
A woman moves into a Manhattan apartment, where she learns that the previous tenant's life ended under mysterious circumstances.
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What critics compared Sliver to
Its most overt homage is to 1993’s “Sliver,” with the key disclaimer that “Sliver,” already a terrible movie, would without the hilarious sex stuff be borderline unwatchable, and “Watcher” is actually pretty damn good.
Unfortunately, the quality is more on the level of “Sliver” than “Basic Instinct.”
Younger brother Frank begins acting out sexually, hitting the liquor cabinet and bonding with tennis pro Ivan (William Baldwin, "Sliver," in fine fettle with a quirky characterization here) who dad's declared a philistine and mom's begun an affair with.
If Basic Instinct played off Vertigo, Noyce's film would like to be a sort of sexed-up Rear Window.
A souped-up, pornographic adaptation of Ira Levin's novel by "Basic Instinct's" Joe Eszterhas, it's essentially "Rear Window" with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, a remote control and a well-fingered playback button.
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The finale shamelessly cheats the audience, echoing that of another Eszterhas disaster: Sliver.
This is a smart whodunnit with twists and turns, and actual clues if you're paying attention -- and this from the writer of "Sliver," which had so little continuity that the murderer was changed after the original ending bombed with test audiences.
As a screenwriter, Eszterhas had success in the 1980s with Flashdance and The Jagged Edge, but Basic Instinct's success was a ticket to self-indulgence, because Sliver and Jade rev up the nudity and debasement with far inferior results.
Movies such as The Bone Collector , Sliver , and Above Suspicion demonstrate craftsmanship but fail spectacularly due to Noyce’s taste for the broad and vulgar side of thriller filmmaking.
La historia en general es remanida a más no poder, la inventiva brilla por su ausencia, el celular de Amy parece contar con una batería infinita, los intentos de comentario social de última hora de Sparling están manejados con trazo muy grueso -sermón sobre las masacres estudiantiles símil Columbine en 1999 de por medio- y para colmo de males Noyce, como decíamos antes, ya perdió la chispa ochentosa de las disfrutables Terror a Bordo ( Dead Calm , 1989) y Furia Ciega ( Blind Fury , 1989), su homóloga de los thrillers de espionaje a lo Juego de Patriotas ( Patriot Games , 1992) y Peligro Inminente ( Clear and Present Danger , 1994) y hasta su acepción más grasienta del suspenso, aquella de Sliver (1993), El Santo ( The Saint , 1997) y El Coleccionista de Huesos ( The Bone Collector , 1999).
The man who had made such iconic Australian films as Backroads (1977), Newsfront and Heatwave (1982), would eventually work with 'stars' like Harrison Ford, Denzel Washington, Sharon Stone and Val Kilmer to make a range of action-thriller genre flicks (Patriot Games [1992], Sliver [1993], The Saint [1997], The Bone Collector [1999] to name a few).
Otherwise, it was a gilded slide into the abyss with "Sliver," "The Saint" and his last major-studio outing, "The Bone Collector," in which Denzel Washington played a homicide detective who was also a quadriplegic principally, or so it appeared, so he couldn't get his hands on co-star Angelina Jolie.
Normally, I'm not a fan of this school of storytelling, which seems sorta lazy to me -- The Usual Suspects fell back on a similar one-twist gimmick in 1995, and Joe Eszterhas has used it repeatedly, to my great irritation (Jagged Edge, Basic Instinct, and Sliver).