BEFORE: This is just how my weekends go lately - one leisurely day out on Long Island, driving around, getting lunch at a new restaurant, maybe do a little shopping at a discount store, then relaxing at home catching up on TV, then a day working at the theater on the evening shift - yesterday it was a guild screening of "Priscilla", the new movie coming out about Priscilla Presley, and jeez, I just watched that Baz Lurhmann "Elvis' film with Austin Butler about two months ago, and there's another film about the Presleys already? This one's from an acclaimed female director, and she happened to be there to do a Q&A session. I'm not allowed to get starstruck any more, instead I just add her to my list of people I've encountered, and that list has probably doubled in the last two years, as a lot of celebrities come through that place. That alone makes it an interesting place to work, and I fell like eventually I'm going to have to get a real full time job, and then I'll miss out on all the celebrity sightings. Maybe when I've seen everybody that there is to see, or when it feels right to move on, I just don't know when that will be.
Denise Dowse carries over from "Eulogy".
THE PLOT: After a one-night stand, a successful married man finds himself entangled in a cunning police detective's latest investigation.
AFTER: In addition to a somewhat similar title, this film has sort of the same jumping-off point as "Fatal Attraction", namely that a man decides to have an affair, and then a screenwriter asked the common question, "What could POSSIBLY go wrong?" I find myself noticing more and more that movie plots seem to come from writers asking this question, because the answer then turns out to be, well, a lot that can go wrong. Michael Douglas' character in "Fatal Attraction" found out that when he stepped outside his marriage, he created a situation, a woman who wouldn't go away, who refused to be ignored, and things spiraled out of control from there.
In "Fatale", a successful man who co-runs a sports management agency suspects his own wife of maybe having an affair - she seems to be putting in a lot of late nights and also occasionally seems cold and distant. This causes her husband to be concerned, I guess maybe his ego couldn't handle the possibility that she just might like working late at her job, or maybe that she prefers her time at the office to spending the evening with him, or even the possibility that over time, people could grow apart or lose interest in each other. Nah, it must be an affair. But then he thinks that figuring this out gives him free rein to have one himself at a bachelor party trip to Vegas. Sure, that should fix things, when has having an affair ever made things worse? HUH? What's the logic here, how far does this guy have to bend reality over backwards in order to justify him wanting to screw around? Even if his wife WERE having an affair, it's not an appropriate reaction to finding that out, to just run out and have one of his own.
His friend and business partner convinces him to take off his wedding ring for a night, and sure enough, he meets a woman in a bar and before long, they're having sex in her room. He tells her his name is "Darren from Seattle" instead of Derrick from L.A., just in case, you know, she gets possessive or wants to contact him after their encounter. You really just can't be too careful about these things, and give out your real first name and the city you live in. God knows there could only be a few Derricks in the L.A. area, but after going by "Darren", Derrick thinks he's in the clear.
But after returning home to L.A., and fending off an armed burglar who broke in, his case gets investigated by detective Valerie Quinlan, who sure looks familiar, now where does he know her from? Right, Vegas! What are the odds? Well, I guess pretty good if a screenwriter wants to create the worst possible scenario. There goes that whole brillant Darren/Derrick plan... But things seem to be OK at first, the detective is a little pissed that she had a one-night stand with a married man AND that she was lied to, but she says she'll keep his secret, because, you know, Vegas. What happens in Vegas is SUPPOSED to stay in Vegas, but apparently sometimes it follows you home.
There's still the matter of that burglary/home invasion, and Det. Quinlan says that she'll be professional and solve the case, which she does, only Derrick may not like what she finds out. OR what she wants Derrick to do in exchange for her silence - it turns out she's got a daughter and an ex-husband who has custody, and she comes up with a very outrageous plan to fix her own life, by using Derrick. And then things start to seem a lot like "Strangers on a Train", or perhaps "Throw Momma from the Train" is more appropriate, since a delusional character thinks that murder is a tool that can be used to foster personal growth, via killing the people who seem to be in your way. Is it a bit weird that a police detective is so casual about killing people? And then the solution to the problems created by killing those people is always to kill a few more people?
And then, after that, if you still have a problem, well it just makes sense - you just didn't kill the RIGHT people. Who's going to notice a few more bodies at that point? What a great message to send out to the kids...the kids who suddenly don't have parents any more, that is. Also, it's an odd message that if you made a mistake and had an affair, the only thing you can do to fix it is to make a whole bunch more, it's a cascading bad decision tree for sure. And all of this could have been prevented if Derrick had just simply ASKED his wife if she were having an affair - and then dealing with the consequences of that, rather than using his suspicions as justification for going out and having an affair himself. Yep, still stuck on that, because I'm sure it might happen in the real world, but it sure doesn't make any logical sense.
Also starring Hilary Swank (last seen in "The Hunt"), Michael Ealy (last seen in "Last Vegas"), Mike Colter (last seen in "Extinction"), Damaris Lewis (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), Tyrin Turner, Danny Pino (last seen in "Dear Evan Hansen"), Geoffrey Owens (last seen in "The Paper"), David Hoflin, Sam Daly, Lexa Gluck, Oakley Bull (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Kali Hawk (last seen in "Bridesmaids"), Lance Stephenson.
RATING: 4 out of 10 cold cases from 2010
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