Separate Lives

Awww the 90's, my era & a beautiful time to into movies. I loved spending ages in Blockbuster looking at all the videos & seeing all the Awesome looking B-movies with all the awesome B-movie stars gracing the covers & i loved finding James Belushi films.

I grew up watching & loving Belushi in Red Heat & K-9 both 80's Cop Classic's & during late 90's & early 2000's i discovered lots of Belushi gems. Yes they were direct-to-video B-movies but Belushi was always great in anything. I remember absolutely loving the direct-to-video sequel K-911 (1999) & watched it countless times. Jim Belushi was always excellent at playing Cops (good or bad) & he's just a damn enjoyable screen presence in any movie. Jim Belushi is hilarious, silly, goofy, sarcastic & alot of fun but he can equally be a dramatic dark force (Retroactive, Gang Related, One Way Out) when needed, he's a damn good actor.

Anyway yes I'm a Jim Belushi fan & have been since the 90's. My favourite Belushi character will always be Mike Dooley from the K-9 films but here in this thrilling suspense film is definitely one of Belushi's best characters & performances.

I discovered this gem in a really cool video shop called Enterprise Video. There they had sections for actors & i found a Robert Patrick section (Another fave actor of mine) & James Belushi & i discovered some Belushi gens such as Separate Lives, Traces of Red, Royce, Retroactive & Mr. Destiny. Belushi was always great at playing Cops & especially during the 90's & here he puts in an excellent performance as Tom Beckwith, an ex-Cop & a psychology student who is asked by his teacher, Professor Lauren Porter (an excellent Linda Hamilton) spy on her as she suffers from a split personality. Linda Hamilton (Terminator 2, Dante's Peak, Shadow Conspiracy) is excellent, she has a very challenging part to play as she has to play two completely different characters in the same body. Hamilton plays the prim 'n' proper Lauren & the wickedly seductive & dangerous Lena. Hamilton nails the roles. Belushi is excellent as Tom, a good man & loving father (some lovely & funny scenes with his little daughter who is hilarious) but he has suffered tragedy after his wife committed suicide a few years earlier. Belushi mostly plays it serious with just a few hints of comedy but really Belushi plays it as it is, a serious & thrilling suspenseful psychological flick with a twist of Noir style. For a low-budget Direct-to-video "Typical cheap B-movie" Separate Lives is pretty excellent. Really well directed by David Madden, a guy who only directed two films ever. The look/cinematography is lovely in all it's cosy 90's style. I loved the music score throughout that went from cheesy Erotic Thriller score to exciting Cop Thriller score & all 90's as it's a product of it's time. Yes there is that Typical 90's Erotic thriller stuff in here as expected for a direct-to-video thriller made in 1995. There's murder, suspense & mystery & what else could you want from a B-movie Thriller.

Separate Lives is very interesting with it's themes of mental health (which is a huge issue now 2022) & the film is kept exciting with Tom's investigating & tracking of Lena. The film is just damn good & so well made with two Knock-out performances as Belushi & Hamilton put in some of their best work into making this thriller really work. Truly one of Belushi's best performances.

A superb 90's mystery thriller with a top performance from the brilliant Jim Belushi.

This is a real howler. An unintentionally hilarious "psychological thriller" that's bad on just about every level. If the opening two scenes don't make you laugh nothing will. I admit I'm a sucker for anything with Linda Hamilton. I'll even put up with Jim Belushi for her. Hell I've done that twice now and both times it was a miserable experience. Ok that's not fair because this one I at least got some chuckles out of. Anyway this movie is the pits but if you're in the mood to laugh give it a shot. It's so stupid it's beyond belief.

Nothing really noteworthy enough here to comment on; just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, middling mystery thriller. The mystery plot keeps you watching, but it relies almost exclusively on the all-important Final Revelation of the Childhood Trauma, and when there are almost no thrills along the way, a viewer can get really impatient (even Hitchcock failed that way, in "Marnie"). James Belushi sleepwalks through his role without any zest, but Linda Hamilton gets to show off - on many occasions - her impressively "sculpted" body, and also some moderate acting talent, though the rapid transformations of her character become a little silly in the final 30 minutes. (**)

Not so long ago I was watching Terminator 2 on DVD and thinking "Linda Hamilton WAS the sexiest screen actress of the 1990s!". Some Hollywood high-roller obviously agreed, and tragically this unerotic, mediocre thriller was born. There is, it has to be said, a lot to be said for sweat, glycerine and extreme body-sculpting. Re-packaged as a low budget "rock chick" in rubber-band miniskirts and chromed leather jacket, Linda looks disappointingly like a what a middle-aged movie executive's secretary wears in his dreams. And whatever happened to James Belushi? A former Arnie co-star, like Linda, in the 80's he was the dependable face of action movies that couldn't afford Bruce Willis. This predictable pot-boiler is not a career high for either. James is let down by the director, often looking wooden, and Linda's split personality psychotherapist swings from a reprise of "Sarah Connor on Thorazine" in T2 to her unconvincing rock-chick alter-ego. The twist in the tail murderer is obvious from the moment "Laura's" flashbacks begin. I was ill, I was stuck in bed, and this was the most watchable thing on TV last night. Shame on me, I had a book to read, and shame on the TV schedulers too.

Former Detective Belushi is hired by his Psychology teacher (Hamilton) to follow her around as she believes she's living a double life. Belushi finds out she is indeed living a double life as his teacher is schizophrenic and her second lifestyle is a dangerous one. In the meantime they fall for each other.

A decent enough story gets mediocre screen treatment, starts off well but loses steam towards the end and the climax is wholly unsatisfying. The actors elevate the film to above average material with convincing performances, Belushi especially good as the widowed former detective. But I must mention that Linda Hamilton, in addition to giving a good performance, has never looked more stunning than here.

With a slightly better script and ending the film could have been very good.