L'ombra del peccato

This flick is full of surprises, from beginning to end. Colorful location shots. Extremely sensual. Good plot. Better-than-average dialog. Excellent acting, directing, photography, editing. A real story, not just a movie created to show what some computer whiz kid can do with special effects.

LAST RITES is a hard movie to find in the rental stores, but well worth the effort. Apparently some group (!) has tried to keep it off the shelves because of the content. Don't let someone censor your viewing--rent or buy this movie and judge for yourself.

This film has a few things going for it and not much else. It does have an icy female villain well played by one Anne Twomey, who is now known only for her small part as the NBC exec who put the kibosh on Jerry's sitcom pilot on Seinfeld. It has the sexiness of Tom Berenger and Daphne Zuniga, but doesn't seem to know what to do with them. And it has brief full-frontal male nudity by an unknown actor at the beginning, worth a look alone since it happens so rarely in American films.

That's it. The rest is not good, but it may be fun to watch just to see how convoluted it gets. Plus you keep thinking the main actors are going to bare all, but they never really do. (Zuniga gets some rear shots, but is pretty skillful at arm-placement when facing the camera. If you wanna see more of Berenger, get At Play in the Fields of the Lord instead.) Sorry to keep dwelling on the nudity, but this is not a film you watch for the plot.

Roger Ebert named this as the worst film of 1988 six weeks before the year was up. I don't think it's that bad, but it tests your patience. Funny, he ran into Zuniga at Sundance about 13 years later and they exchanged pleasantries. Apparently he was kinder to her in other reviews. She has deserved better, and in fact could be having a Helen Hunt kinda career if she hadn't been cast in films like this. (Being on Melrose Place probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but not in retrospect.)

You can decide for yourself if this film is "so bad it's good" or just bad. Perhaps it might have been a great cheap Cinemax "erotic thriller" with a controversial priest angle, but at face value it's lame, with a lousy written tough-guy priest character that rings false all the way through it. If you want to see a story about a morally compromised priest, see Linus Roache in the excellent PRIEST, not this.

To sum up, I was curious about this film, and I'm glad I watched it, but I probably would not watch it again. (Did I just qualify that with a 'probably'?)

I recently saw this movie for a second time, and noticed that the ring was on his finger at the very beginning. I'm not Catholic, but doesn't this mean that he's married to the church, as are nuns? Could someone clarify? I think the reason he took off the ring was that he realized he had betrayed the vows he took to the Church.

I loved Tom in this movie, but I pretty much love him in everything. It was interesting to see what a cathedral looks like "behind the scenes". I also enjoyed the scenes in Mexico, especially the celebrations. The plot was implausible, but not as offensive as some would have you believe.

Hard to believe that Tom did this movie one year before Major League. It obviously shows what range he has as an actor.

+MAJOR SPOILERS+ At the start of the movie "Last Rites" Geno, Roberto Corbo, is gunned down in his hotel room by his wife Zena, Anne Twomey, as his lover Angela, Daphne Zuniga, runs for her life and locks herself in the bathroom.

Zena blasting the locked door with a shower of bullets feels that Angela is also dead and leaves. Later Father Michael, Tom Berenger, who's a priest at New Yorks Saint Patrick's Cathedral takes a confession from non-other then Angela about feeling guilty for the death of her lover Geno. Geno is Michael's good friend as well as his brother-in-law.

Arranging to meet Angela that night Michael is picked up by a cabbie Luis, Al Rodriquez, who was sent by Angela to take him to her loft. There Angela tells Michael that she had no idea that Geno was still married to Zena Michael's sister. Now she feels that she'll be killed by Zena's and Micheal's father's Don Carlo, Dean Clark, mobsters for fooling around with Geno. Michael at first feels that there's more to the story then what Angela is telling him. Why did she go to him, Zena's brother, of all people to confess about having an affair with his brother-in-law Geno without knowing who he is?

At first when watching the movie "last Rites" it looks like the story of a woman who was cheated on by her husband who then took things into her own hands. But as the movie moves along you begin to realize that the story is more, far more, then what you at first thought it was.

Michael is smitten by Angel's beauty as well as her vulnerability hides her in his residents at the cathedral with the help of fellow priest Father Freddy, Paul Dooley. As Michael's father Don Carlo, New York's Boss of Bosses in the Mafia, has his hoods out on the street looking for her.

It's obvious that Angela did a lot more damage to Zena and her father that what it seems on the surface in her having an affair with Zena's husband Geno. Some of the truth comes out later when Michael has a talk with his friend and undercover policemen Nuzo, Chick Vennera. But before Nuzo can do anything to make Michael see what he's involved in he and his partner are gunned down in an undercover drug bust that tragically backfired.

It turns out that Geno was talking to the Feds and gave them enough rope to hang Michael's father Don Carlo. Geno was also making a deal with the Mannonie family who were trying to unseat or whack Don Carlo and take over his crime empire. The Mannonie's gave Geno five million dollars with which he and Angela would take off with and never be heard from again. Also it was Angela who put Geno up to selling out Don Carlo who she later planned to have murdered when they were out of the country and then keep all the money for herself.

Crossing the border into Mexico Michael and Angela spend the night at a hacienda but when Michael wakes up the next morning Angela is gone. Going into town looking for Angela Michael sees Luis the cab driver who took him to Angela's loft in New York. Going to the house where he saw Luis coming out of Michael finds that Luis and Angela are married and that they played him for a sucker! The plan was to get Angela out of the country and away from the vengeful Don Carlo and his mob. Both Louis & Angela are now going to have Michael murdered. Then with Michael out of the way they'll together live off the money that the Mannonie family paid Geno to sell out Michael's father.

Very confusing movie due to the bad editing and atrocious acting on the part of the beautiful but irritating Daphne Zuniga. But if you overlook the bad editing and acting and follow the story it's not as bad as most people say it is. This doesn't mean that "Last Rites" is by any stretch of the imagination a good movie.

Tom Berenger really rises above the material that he's given in the movie with a very sensitive and troubling portrayal of Father Michael. A man born into the mob who wants to make penance for his father's sins. Also Tom Berenger shows a very commanding use of the Italian language in the scenes where he speaks it. But It's the movies bad editing and directing that does it in by muddling the story instead of crystallizing it.

Among the many plot-holes, and there are legions of them, in the movie is the scene in Mexico after Michael finds out about Angela cheating on him as well as setting him up for an assassins bullet. You see Michael, after praying in the local church, taking off what looks like, I may be wrong, a wedding ring from his finger and sadly dropping it on the ground. Even though you never saw Michael and Angela get married in the movie for him to have that wedding ring in the first place.

You would think that with the mob, the Catholic church, machine guns, hookers, hit men (and women), full-frontal nudity, screaming inside a church, the lead actress crying that "I'm a whore!", a stuttering priest and a uniformly attractive cast that there'd be a reason to get excited about this thing. Alas, you'll only be disappointed unless, like me, you want to see it because you've heard only bad.

Although it's shot in a made-for-TV style, there a couple of interesting camera shots (set in Mexico) and even a moment or two where there's promise of the story kicking in. Unfortunately, after the first ten minutes or so it's too late to recover.

Poorly written, poorly acted, poorly conceived. If it had been just a little worse, it could actually be good. Otherwise, you can find a better way to spend a couple hours of your life.