The Last Seduction

Seen for the second time in January 2013.

The first time I saw the "The Last Seduction" was many years ago, and I didn't really like it that much. I thought the plot was too convoluted, the twists were dumb, and that overall it kind of tried too hard. I also apparently hallucinated a slightly different ending where the protagonist Mike clears his name by using the letter from "Trish" saying she's moving to Beston. That apparently doesn't happen.

I liked the movie a lot more this time around. It's a rather generic 90's noir, which is kind of a tired genre, but generally better than the similarly steamy noirs of the 80's. Noir ran into a lot of problems in the 80's and 90's. It's not just that the genre became tired, but the expectations of nudity and swearing in these movies pretty much ruins them. Everything seems less clever, less smart than the classics. I like steamy and I like swearing probably more than the next guy. But.. how clever would the patter in "The Big Sleep" have been if there wasn't the need for innuendo? And the appeal of noir is basically in its cleverness. Hanging a couple softcore scenes on a rickety plot of corruption, betrayal, and manipulation is a gross abuse of a venerable genre.

Also the style of the original noirs is pretty much obliterated for the sake of making a modern movie. It's as if the film-makers think the defining aspect of noir involves a manipulative femme fatale and a convoluted murder plot, when so much of what made classic noirs good was their style, their lingo, the sense of gritty sophistication. The world of noir was always a contrived one. That world never actually existed. Directors of modern noirs seem to make the mistake of trying to make a noir set in the real world, often to disasterous results. This is probably why most neo-noirs that actually succeed are either period pieces, or cartoons, or else something like "Brick" which has clearly created a self-contained stylized world that has little to do with the world we now live in. The remakes of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and the "The Big Sleep" are perfect illustrations of the problems with trying to make a good noir today. Where the originals are both great films if a bit mawkish in the Postman's case, the remakes sacrifice stylishness and cleverness for a steamy realness to a pretty dismal result.

But the "The Last Seduction" more or less works despite the pitfalls of the modern noir. The plot barely holds together and suspension of disbelief requires real effort, but not in a seriously flawed way. Bill Pullman is great playing his character to comedic effect. Linda Fiorentino gives a good performance as an incredibly cold-hearted, incredibly manipulative sexpot. The guy who plays the lug does a good job at being a lug too. He's more believable than I had remembered him being, though the small town lens through which we view him is complete nonsense. You find guys like him all over the city. And you find women like Bridget pretty much nowhere. But I guess the provincial view of small towns this film evinces is supposed to suggest some kind of sophistication. But the people who made it weren't sophisticated enough to do it in a truthful way. Grade B.