A travesty of a fiasco of a disaster. A simply awful 80's remake of one of the toughest, sexiest and above all best acted noir thrillers. Yes, I know Garfield and Turner would be hard to beat but Nicholson and Lange aren't even in the race. You can see old lumbering Jack thinking his lines before he speaks them, while Ms Lange's acting goes right off the scale, rarely to return.
The film has no pacing to speak of and no dramatic arc at any point in the story. It also makes unaccountable narrative jumps which if I hadn't seen the original would have made little or no sense at all. Then there's the downbeat epilogue the point of which I'm still trying to fathom, right alongside Angelica Huston's appearance (I won't elevate it to cameo status) as, get this, a circus lion-tamer who promptly beds the errant Jack before depositing her pet puma on Lange (no, I don't know why either).
As for the infamous sex-scene on the kitchen table, it comes out of nowhere with no hint of sexual chemistry between the couple beforehand and I found the fact that Nicholson pretty much half-rapes Lange to make his point, as offensive as it was gratuitous. As for Lange's dimwitted husband, Nick, he leaves no impression at all so that you don't care when he meets his end at the lovers' hands.
I've rarely seen such a poorly edited, acted and scripted so-called major Hollywood movie. Without trying to be too much the Minister for The Bleeding Obvious, by-pass this mess in favour of the black and white original every time.
The film has no pacing to speak of and no dramatic arc at any point in the story. It also makes unaccountable narrative jumps which if I hadn't seen the original would have made little or no sense at all. Then there's the downbeat epilogue the point of which I'm still trying to fathom, right alongside Angelica Huston's appearance (I won't elevate it to cameo status) as, get this, a circus lion-tamer who promptly beds the errant Jack before depositing her pet puma on Lange (no, I don't know why either).
As for the infamous sex-scene on the kitchen table, it comes out of nowhere with no hint of sexual chemistry between the couple beforehand and I found the fact that Nicholson pretty much half-rapes Lange to make his point, as offensive as it was gratuitous. As for Lange's dimwitted husband, Nick, he leaves no impression at all so that you don't care when he meets his end at the lovers' hands.
I've rarely seen such a poorly edited, acted and scripted so-called major Hollywood movie. Without trying to be too much the Minister for The Bleeding Obvious, by-pass this mess in favour of the black and white original every time.