Pretty When You Cry

(2001) Seduced: Pretty When You Cry THRILLER

Straight to rental, starring Jamie Kennedy as Albert Straka, becoming infatuated with club owner Frank Carreni's (Michael Cavalieri who's also credited as Associate producer) wife, Sara Carreni (Carlton Elizabeth). Much of the movie shows him explaining his story to homicide detective, Lukas Black (Sam Elliot). Inspired by other movies such as "The Last Seduction" to "Basic Instinct" and many other movies about females instructing people what to do blah, blah, blah. 1 star for the twist even though the overall movie is uninteresting and inconsistent.

Looking over the credits for this movie, it is unsurprising to find that the director has impressive credentials... as a cinematographer. The film is well composed visually. Other than that, this movie fails on so many levels, not the least of which is the horrible, horrible script. "Shocking" plot twists for the sake of shocking twists kill any suspense this film has. The pacing is horrible. After about an hour of the film, you think it is about to end, after another ten minutes, you are PRAYING for it to end. Gratuituos sex and violence are all this film has going for it. Why Sam Elliot agreed to do a movie as tragically terrible as this travesty of filmmaking is anyone's guess? If I was presented with a choice of watching this film again and getting ebola... I'd watch this movie, but it would be a tough choice.

Okay, this is a "B" flic at least, but I have a lot of fun with B flics. This one, however (despite the convoluted plot) was not laughable. Of course I rented it for the thrills promised, but as usual the S&M were only hinted at. Dumb plot. Still, this movie had *something* you would never see in a mainstream movie: In mainstream movies, everyone turns out to be just who who you thought they were - just who they appear to be - though they may have been led temporarily astray. In this flic, like many forgettable B flics, the characters actually are obsessed or driven by forces that do not reveal themselves in persona, or what is said on the service. The fact that who think is the lead character is not the real lead character is quite a move. The stereotypical victim has been in control all the time of all the action, including the sexual-violent action. Underneath it all this character is not really "good" waiting to be saved by manly heroism. This is real, & refreshing. Too bad we still have the cliche of retribution.

It must have been fairly good since I didn't seem to want to stop watching it, but it's nothing to write home about either. I can say I was surprised by some of the twists and I was never exactly sure of what was going on, but then again, I'm not sure if that was because of the intelligence of the script or because of its abnormality. Still, it deserves a 6 out of 10 for cinematography and a great sound track.

-m0

This film is so film noir that it's difficult to see. There is more black than color in most shots. Most of the time it's difficult to figure out what is supposed to be happening. Sam Elliot is brilliant as usual but his time was wasted in this one given given the really crummy cinematography and editing. While the come on for this movie is sexual explicitness the version I saw, which was distributed in Canada, had none. About all the film could muster was in that department was some rather tame S & M and sounds of sex. That's sounds - not view of. I felt ripped off after buying the DVD for an extremely reasonable amount of money, i.e. cheap. With the exception of Elliot's performance watching this movie is a waste of time.