O Reverso de um Crime

Back in the '80s, Anthony Hopkins made a lot of TV movies, some which used his great talent to advantage, and others in which he was underused. Here he is teamed with Blythe Danner and Swoosie Kurtz in a Levinson-Link concoction, "Guilty Conscience."

Levinson and Link were really masters of suspense and mystery, responsible for Columbo, Murder, She Wrote, and many TV movies, both as producers and writers.

In this movie, Anthony Hopkins is a prominent attorney who comes up with several ways to murder his wife (Blythe Danner) who has the goods on him and can expect a huge settlement in a divorce.

In his mind, he argues the merits of the different plots before a judge, a portrait of his wife's father, and undergoes questioning by the DA, who is Hopkins in spectacles.

Enter one of his dalliances, Swoosie Kurtz, and the fun begins. How is the murder going to be done? And who's going to be murdered?

This is a wonderful movie, and the kind you couldn't make today - there's lots of talk - in fact, entire monologues by Hopkins as he talks back and forth with and to himself - and not a ton of action.

Swoosie Kurtz is a riot as the offbeat mistress, and Blythe Danner appropriately elegant and thoughtful as Hopkins' wife.

It's unfortunate that these kinds of TV movies are no longer made. In the '80s, there were many of these mystery movies: Murder by Natural Causes, Rehearsal for Murder, Vanishing Act, The Guardian, etc., all very well cast.

Today it's all true crime, which would be great, if any of them were half as well written as anything by Richard Levinson, William Link, or Larry Cohen.

ANTHONY HOPKINS is the mentally agile lawyer who is continually thinking up ways to get rid of his wife, the fashionable and elegant BLYTHE DANNER. Evidently, their stormy marriage is at a breaking point and he decides he must plot her demise rather than go through with a messy divorce.

But what follows has enough plot turns to hold your interest, although the device of having Hopkins weigh all considerations against a trial lawyer (Hopkins in a dual role) gets a little tiresome after awhile. Not that he isn't a compelling actor whether playing the lawyer or the prosecutor, and he does create sympathy for a very detestable man.

The plot takes quite a surprising turn when SWOOSIE KURTZ shows up as his mistress, another very calculating character who has some surprises of her own to throw into the mix.

It all has the feel of a poor man's DIAL M FOR MURDER, showing its TV origins within some narrow settings. But you have to give credit to the writers who keep the tale spinning right until the sudden finish.

The cat-and-mouse byplay between husband and wife is reminiscent of the sort of banter between Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine in SLEUTH, but the overall result is not quite as clever.

Fans of Anthony Hopkins will delight in this carefully staged teleplay. Fans of Blythe Danner will also be pleased to see a favorite character actress given more screen time than usual.

Although the plot is fairly standard and the events mostly predictable, it comes off much better than say your average Perry Mason or Columbo Movie. Hopkins, as a high-priced, high-power attorney, is delightful as he comically and and viciously destroys his own plans for his wife's murder. The play succeeds in its own ability to recognize its weaknesses. Unlike most television mysteries where the audience is asked to ignore the plot holes and revel in the detective's brilliance at spotting the clue and solving the crime, this play takes pride in pointing out its own holes as it goes along. As an audience participation spectacle, it is fun to play along, spotting the holes before the characters do. Overall, it's a bit static, with the vast majority of the action never leaving the main house, and cynics will find fault or boredom with the events leading up to the conclusion. But fans of the genre, or of Hopkins, will no doubt remain intrigued and find the ending quite satisfying. The whole play comes off much like the great Olivier and Caine character study, "Sleuth" and those who have seen that longish masterpiece know what kind of a compliment that is, and will also appreciate that this is 34 minutes shorter.

Mystery fans can do much worse for an evenings entertainment.

Hopkins and Danner are great as the opposing spouses. His conversations with himself are fun to watch, as he tries to work out how to kill his wife. Not so much a whodunit, as a who's going to do it, with a wonderful twist at the end. And don't miss a word of the dialogue.

For a TV movie, this is awfully good. Hopkins spends much of the movie playing out scenarios of how his murder trial would play out if he killed his wife, with a portrait of his father playing the judge. He goes through different methods of killing her, and plays out the trial until he finds the mistake in his plan. These one-man scenes are very funny, and Hopkins delivers them expertly, as one would expect.