vincentlynch-moonoi
To those who say this is Hitchcokian...then you're that familiar with a Hitchcock film. Hitchcock would have had MUCH better pacing. The set up here was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. I had thought this was just about wife-swapping, so I'm glad I stuck with it...but the only reason I stuck with the long "first half" was that I really like Kevin Kline and Kevin Spacey.And that's just for starters. Too many machinations to be plausible. That's where the too clever for its own good comes in.Is there a saving grace? Yes. Stellar acting from Kline and Spacey. It was still a couple of years before Spacey hit his stride (with "The Usual Suspects"), but he deliciously evil in this film. Never trust a man who wears white shoes! Did Kline ever hit his stride? I think not. Instead he had a nice steady career. But he's great here. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is very good as Kline's wife.Do I recommend this film? With strong reservations. If you don't generally enjoy Kline and Spacey, I'd skip it. But if you're a fan you'll probably like it. Just don't really expect to be sitting on the edge of your seat. It's not that suspenseful.
Predrag
The film stars sexy Kevin Kline and Kevin Spacey, both married and recently becoming next door neighbors. Kevin Kine is supposedly in a happy relationship with his wife (played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, but all hell breaks loose when Kevin Spacey's character sets his new friend up for the murder of his wife so he can collect on a heft insurance policy. Does the criminal justice system in America really let a man who is about to stand trial for a brutal murder out on bail? Do they then let him wander, unsupervised, wherever he pleases? This movie started out great the way it established the growing friendship between two very different couples and then moved into a murder mystery. The acting was first-rate (with the exception of Rebecca Miller can we say boring?) but then the plot defied logic. Further, it is completely unrealistic that a shattered Kevin Kline's wife would have so immediately taken up with Kevin Spacey. By the time the film ended, it felt like a comedy, it was so ridiculous! Overall rating: 7 out of 10.
newday98074
Any number of Hollywood presentations stretch their plots to allow scenes that add thrills and give the actors a chance to "emote". CA takes this to another level, creating a universe where people do things for no particular reason except to keep the engine chugging along, pulling its strange cargo toward a requisite splashy finale. Along the way the movie becomes much like a creature that has passed through the transformation pods in "The Fly". You can kind of tell what was intended but the actual result is anything but pretty. Accompanying these oddities is the absolute stupidity required of the characters. At one point the lead, accused of one murder, discovers potential exculpatory evidence which he shares with an insurance investigator. This could save the insurance company 1.6 million dollars. The logical thing to do, of course, would be for the investigator, with the help of the police, to check this out saving the insurance company their money and eliminating the murder charge for the lead. But does the investigator follow it up? Well, that would be expecting these people to have high level thinking. High level in this case means what any reasonable person might think about. Since the characters in CA tend to have the thinking processes of turnips the lead follows up himself, resulting in yet another murder on his hands. However that does allow the requisite finale which is completed with the panache of a 5th grade play. The acting is fine, but plot holes and poor direction particularly of action sequences ruined the film.
savage-grrrl
This movie is both unlikely and unlikeable. It is unlikely that good actors would sign on to such a ridiculous and implausible screenplay. Perhaps neither Kline nor Spacey read the script before agreeing to do this film. That seems the most plausible explanation.At some point one would imagine that someone would have asked the director just why the audience should give a flying flip about the fate of the alleged protagonist. He is a man being framed for the murder of his neighbor, when he was only guilty of raping her. (I should also note that he had also arranged to have his own wife raped by the husband of his victim, but that man, the alleged antagonist, did not follow through. Instead he killed the woman Kline's character had assaulted and set out to frame him for it.) The women in this movie are as vapid as the men are vile. The framed character's wife ultimately forgives him when he is cleared of the murder without any regard for the fact that he had snuck over to their neighbor's house in the middle of the night to have sex with another woman without her consent. She also doesn't seem to mind that he had volunteered her for the same treatment.
AD
