Second Skin

Pretty decent film noir, well acted, gets better as it goes along. Then a stupid tacked on surprise ending blows all sense of reality. God I hate it when they do that. Sure I was surprised. Why wouldn't I be? Why would I expect an ending that nothing suggested and that negates everything I've seen before? The movie has charismatic leads (Henstridge has done a lot of bad stuff, but she's very good here in what I can only describe as the Linda Fiorentino part), Peter Fonda is sho'nuff creepy as the villain, Liam Waite (Henstridge's real life partner) is convincing as a hit man, and Angus MacFadyn makes a believable hero. There are some nice (believable) twists and earned climaxes along the way. Some clichés, yes (amnesia). But all in all, a very good time until the silly betcha-didn't-see-that-coming, surprise-is-everything last couple of minutes. Oh well, life is full of disappointments.

Standard mob story with pretty girl falling for the wrong guy. She ends up with amnesia and starts her life over with the guy who happened to be there. Lots of behind the scenes intrigue going on, with secrets being kept by everyone. Tough to tell who is scamming who, and just how we got to this point of payback. It all comes apparent in the end, but by then you really don't care. The characters do there lines okay, but not much to work with. He gets the pretty girl, but there is no spark and no reason to believe she would ever be with him. Maybe if they used different actors, then the emotion would have been better. Then we would try to believe the mystery or even bother to understand it. This looks like it could have been okay, but along the way it just ends up flat.

I caught this movie on TV after watching a rather suspicious promotional trailer. The first scene with the sensual Natasha Henstridge dressed in a semi-transparent white dress hooked me and I decided to give the movie a try.

The first half of Second Skin is pretty tolerable. I felt I was watching a fair and honest low budget noir picture, certainly moving toward some major twists. But I could never expect the plot could become so flawed and the second half of the movie could become so lame and dreary.

This predictable, cliché-ridden movie could have been interesting. The music and the photography create a nice, moody atmosphere. Henstridge is, well... sensual as the femme-fatale, and MacFadyen is ok as the guy running from his past. Even though I don't like the way some scenes are cut, the real problem is the plot which turns out to be some kind of mess in the second half of the movie.

After the 90 minutes of Second Skin it's frustrating to realize probably nothing will linger in your memory apart from the beauty of Henstridge.

The problem with this movie is the leaden touch of Darrell Roodt.

Pretty photography and an absolutely gorgeous lead babe can't hide the fact that there is no plot, that the girl is getting involved with a guy who has the charisma of a rotting potato and that by the time you get to the mystery, you've really stopped caring.

The movie _slowly_ meanders from one cliche to the next. Guy without a past runs a bookstore without clientele, when a beautiful babe comes in and spouts a number of tacky cliches. Then, in the mother of all plot devices, she walks out the store and _gets hit by a car_ so she can "lose her memory".

Who cares? I don't. A waste of money.

I have no idea why people are giving this movie a bad rap. This is a really good (small) movie with a great surprise ending. You will not guess it, which is more than you can say for 90% of the movies out there. The story moves along through twists and turns. Yes, the lead actor, whatever his name is, is and odd looking duden and maybe miscast, but the plot is so good that it carries him along. Natasha is in top form, I wish she would stop making other crap movies because when she is given a role she plays it well, really well. I don't know if I would go out of my way to see this movie but I usually watch it when it shows up on cable, twice already. 8/10