Pluskylang Great Film overall

Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

sergicaballeroalsina It doesn't seem relevant to me to have read the book or to have watched the previous versions in order to value the film for what it is: A non-dissembled classic tragedy. Crude, very expressive, of brutish characters, clearly focused on their inescapable sacrifice. The best? How the constant humidity of the atmospheres is portrayed, the clear and fine exposure of the eroticism, the depth of the shadows of the characters: Aggressive punks oozing of sex for whom the red lines don't exist. Characters that fit perfectly with the genre, in fact. The best of the best? The outstanding performance, very transpired, relevant by the chemistry between the actors. Excellent stuff! After the movie I ran to buy the book. I promise to read it soon. OK, I was crossing my fingers.

SnoopyStyle Drifter Frank Chambers (Jack Nicholson) decides to stay and get a job from gas station owner Nick Papadakis (John Colicos) when he sees Nick's wife Cora (Jessica Lange). Cora is tired of her marriage and convinces Frank to kill Nick. After some failures and hesitations, they finally succeed. The prosecutor tries Cora and use tricks to pit her against Frank. Defense attorney Mr. Katz (Michael Lerner) is able to use tricks to get an acquittal.I find their relationship careening between love and hate too jarring. While I like the two leads, they have trouble maintaining the chemistry. The movie is trying to stuff a lot in. I can't blame it all on the movie for trying to cram the novel into the two hour movie. At times, the movie feels too abrupt. There is one major change for the ending that actually makes it less poetic.

gregkae It is quite a lengthy exercise, be prepared, so that you can put all that time to good use. I had my whites on long cycle, rice in the steamer, managed to do all my overdue emails, pay the bills and still not miss a single turn in the plot. It is like NASCAR without the cars, a walking contest. Forget what other reviews say about steamy sex scenes, there is only one and unfortunately, while you can get off to Lange, it includes Nicholson (and just like that scene, the movie is all over the place and does not make any sense and you do wish you could cut Nicholson out of the picture). Thank dog I got my stuff done otherwise I would have regretted lost time. The book is 100 pages long which makes circa 1.22 minutes of screen time per page and this is the gripping part.

jc-osms A travesty of a fiasco of a disaster. A simply awful 80's remake of one of the toughest, sexiest and above all best acted noir thrillers. Yes, I know Garfield and Turner would be hard to beat but Nicholson and Lange aren't even in the race. You can see old lumbering Jack thinking his lines before he speaks them, while Ms Lange's acting goes right off the scale, rarely to return.The film has no pacing to speak of and no dramatic arc at any point in the story. It also makes unaccountable narrative jumps which if I hadn't seen the original would have made little or no sense at all. Then there's the downbeat epilogue the point of which I'm still trying to fathom, right alongside Angelica Huston's appearance (I won't elevate it to cameo status) as, get this, a circus lion-tamer who promptly beds the errant Jack before depositing her pet puma on Lange (no, I don't know why either).As for the infamous sex-scene on the kitchen table, it comes out of nowhere with no hint of sexual chemistry between the couple beforehand and I found the fact that Nicholson pretty much half-rapes Lange to make his point, as offensive as it was gratuitous. As for Lange's dimwitted husband, Nick, he leaves no impression at all so that you don't care when he meets his end at the lovers' hands.I've rarely seen such a poorly edited, acted and scripted so-called major Hollywood movie. Without trying to be too much the Minister for The Bleeding Obvious, by-pass this mess in favour of the black and white original every time.