Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35578 in DVD
• Released on: 1998-08-05
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 113 minutes

Amazon.com
With a foreigner's revitalizing influence, German director Volker Schlondorff turns this standard potboiler (based on the novel Just Another Sucker by British pulp writer James Hadley Chase) into a beguiling exercise in genre classicism. Woody Harrelson stars as a former journalist, just released from serving two years on a trumped-up charge, who is drawn into a troublesome mock-extortion scheme by the scheming wife (Elisabeth Shue) of a dying Florida millionaire. The movie's got style to spare and plenty of humid Florida atmosphere, but it's built on a series of improbable developments and is too low-key to generate riveting momentum. But Schlondorff occupies this tawdry territory with a keen sense of necessary mood and pace, maintaining adequate internal logic and awareness of the story's vintage roots. Subplots involving Shue's stepdaughter (Chloë Sevigny) and Harrelson's girlfriend (Gina Gershon) provide enjoyable distractions from the story's implausibilities. The movie's better suited to the fertile pulp mills of cable TV. But with an absurdly twisting plot to hold your interest, it's fun to watch how Schlondorff builds a bridge between traditional film noir and a more contemporary approach to sultry intrigue. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

"A Shue In"!
Harrelson's acting is stiff and slow...he needs a tougher director that would push him like the one he did for the life of Larry Flint. This film had the feel of an "Off Braodway-Little Theater Group" effort. The ladies made it pleasing to the eyes! CHEERS! A nice "popcorn" movie.

EXCELLENT SERVICE
A PROMPT SERVICE UNLIKE BEING CHARGED BY CUSOMS FOR SENDING OUT 2 FILMS TOGETHER CAUSING EXTRA PAYMENT OF £11=00 WHICH YOU DID SENDING TOGETHER [ON MOONLIGHT BAY] AND [BY THE LIGHT OF THE SILVERY MOON]

A Very Underrated 'Neo Noir'
I think this is one of those modern-day film noirs (neo noir) that went under the radar. It is excellent, and few people know about it.

It had an interesting and unpredictable story with some very neat twists. I'm not really sure I liked the very ending, but I sure enjoyed the rest of it. The film sports a couple of sexy female leads, played by Elisabeth Shue and Chloe Sevigny and I loved the wonderful colors in this movie. Not only was the cinematography great, so was the soundtrack with some solid blues tracks.

The movie was labeled by some national critics as a "poor man's 'Body Heat.'" Well, that's fine with me because I liked "Body Heat" a lot, too. If you liked that, you should like this movie, too.

Yes, there are a few holes in the story but nothing that damaged the storyline to any degree. Woody Harrelson was good in the lead and Gina Gershon and Michael Rapaport provided solid performance in supporting roles.