The Last Seduction (1994) (Region 2) (Import)

Wendy (Aka Bridget played by Linda Fiorentino) is sitting in a bar in the salubrious surroundings of Beston, which is near Buffalo NY apparently. She is enjoying a quiet drink alone, the archetypal femme fatale dressed in black smoking sultrily, when local boy Mike (Peter Berg) decides to try his luck with this lavicious beauty. She looks at him like he's a pool of something vile and unidentifiable on a pavement and tells in no uncertain terms to leave her alone .Mike in a last desperate attempt to impress tells her he's hung like a Grand National winner. She promptly checks this out herself and satisfied designates him to service her carnally. Mike is blown away, if you'll forgive the pun, this is the best sex he's ever had. He is putty in her hands. Which is good for his libido but very, very bad for his long term well being. This is one cruel amoral lady. Just how cruel and calculating, the audience like poor dork Mike has yet to discover.

The Last Seduction was released in 1994 and may well have earned Fiorentino an Oscar nod, but she was denied because it was shown on cable TV before it's theatrical release. A great shame, as she is truly superb in this movie dispensing caustic home truths and waspish witticisms with laser like accuracy. She is also undeniably incontrovertibly sex on a stick. Her allure exudes from the screen. This woman should have been a major star but somehow it never happened and we have ended up with Jennifer Aniston and Katie Holmes who are about as sexy as a supermarket trolley......in a canal.

Fiorentino is the main reason this film works so well but it's directed with metricious zeal by John Dahl who you feel is aiming for a noir classic but the scabrous wit in Steve Baranciks screenplay and the zesty interplay between the characters lets the light in too often for that. Though be in no doubt the films heart is blacker than a space shuttle full of Republicans orbiting a dark star.

The plot has Bridget duping her husband Clay (Bill Pullman in a wonderfully lugubriously outraged role) out of near a million dollars after persuading him to run a scam involving cocaine and some not very nice people. She has fled with the money and left him to face whatever unpleasant consequences ensue which is why she has hitched up in Hicksville. Which brings us to her meeting with Mike, who she promptly gives the run around in a way that makes you question whether anyone would be that gullible .But then you remember as a bloke, some of the trials and travails you have undergone in order to get laid and realise that just about any bloke would have done exactly the same as the unfortunate Mike. Berg is great in this movie, resisting the temptation to play Mike as a downtrodden hero, content to sit it out in a manipulated naïve role. Some may feel outraged that there is no moral payback for Bridget but if there was the film would not really work as well as it does. Life is sometimes as downright vindictive and iniquitous as this film.

This two disc set includes a directors cut with extra scenes which are ostensibly sex scenes though there is an alternative ending. This also includes a making of documentary, a dry director's commentary by Dahl and for some reason an episode of "Fallen Angels" starring Pullman, Heather Graham and Jon Favreau which was written by Dahl based on a Mickey Spillane story. But the main draw is the film, which is a cold yet cool classic......and Fiorentino of course.

The Last Seduction is a classic of Film Noir and one of the best films of the 1990's. I have been seeking it on video since I first saw it on TV but it has been unavailable in this country for many years. At the price it is now offered at no one should miss this opportunity...now where is the DVD version? Renowned at the times for it's sex scenes this was perhaps a little unfair to such a wonderful film. Certainly it is sexy, but even for 1993 the sex scenes were not over the top and are absolutely essential to both storyline and character development. Linda Fiorentino is both alluring and blatantly sexual in the main role as a femme fatale running away from New York and her husband with the proceeds of their first and only drug deal end up in a small town, which as a city gal she despises. He, played by Bill Pullman, understandably attempts to get the money back but is thwarted by his ice cold wife and her new lover (Peter Berg) who she manipulates mercilessly into solving all her problems. To reveal more would be to ruin the storyline of this brilliant film. Fiorentino demonstrates here that she is a cut above the typical hollywood actress, Bill Pullman is great as her husband and Peter Berg suitably unsophisticated as the small town lover out of his depth as her latest conquest. The late J T Walsh puts in a typically excellent - though small - performance as her lawyer. In a word buy it....wait for the inevitable DVD then buy that too.

"[The Last Seduction] is a roller-coaster of twists and turns. It is the classic film noir thriller, but it turns everything on its head. Just when you think you know what's going to happen, it does a twist into the unexpected. I'm a fan of the [noir] genre. I like atmosphere and I'm fascinated by the psychology of the characters - the deceit, the betrayal and the desperation." - John Dahl, director of THE LAST SEDUCTION

Linda Fiorentino has since appeared as fluff in, for example, MEN IN BLACK ... but why oh WHY is such a talent being made to go to waste? As tough-as-nails, rotten-to-the-core femme fatale Bridget Gregory/Wendy Kroy there was just no stopping her - "Fiorentino is ferociously good" ...

John Dahl (KILL ME AGAIN and RED ROCK WEST) delivers this unusual, dark, tongue-in-cheek neo-noir thriller about Bridget Gregory, a sexy and oh-so-savvy hustler who connives unlikable husband Clay, a struck-off doctor, into selling pharmaceutical cocaine to pay off a loan shark ... then takes off with the $700,000 whilst he's in the shower. No packing of bags, no checking for passport - nothing. She simply takes the haul and leaves. Stopping in Jerkville, USA (Beston in up-state New York) to 'phone her lawyer (the late J.T. Walsh: stripey shirt, red braces, slick dialogue - yeah, he's The Sharp Attorney), she is advised not to start spending the $700,000 loot for another six months at least.

What now? Oh well, have a beer first. She breezes into the nearest bar, where local boy Mike Swale (Peter Berg) is berating Beston, NY and all its inhabitants for its bland and unimaginative provincialness. He is immediately bowled-over and conquered by Bridget's confidence - needing a place to stay the night, she enlists him with the irresistible, "You're my designated f*** for the evening ..." Bridget leaves in the morning, having exhausted Swale. To lay low for six months means taking a job. No problem, she was in telemarketing in New York and there's a director's position going at the local electronics firm. And so is a rented house.

To Swale, Bridget Gregory (now adopting the nom de noir Wendy Kroy) is a slick city-chick, and his soon-to-be ticket out of Beston (actually, it's his second attempt; the first ended in humiliating farce in Buffalo), and he cannot get her out of his mind or out of his system. But he need not try too hard for Wendy 'keeps' him anyway, as suitable cover while she has to put up with Beston, where people always say "Hello!" "please" and "Thank you," and no one locks their doors at night ... Fractious Bridget/Wendy shudders in unconcealed contempt. "Spare me your brainless, countrified morality." When Clay's loan-shark heavy, Harlan, tracks her down, he is almost-casually despatched by sexily luring him out of his seat-belt ... to his cost. Wendy Kroy is at her chessmaster's best when epitomizing the maxim "never underestimate a man's ability to underestimate a woman ..." by using stereotypical assumptions about women to her advantage.

Such as the scene where, in cutesy smiles and twee little apron, she brings cookies out to the detective who is keeping an eye on her house. As we already see Bridget as the Ice Queen, we wonder what this is about - it's a ploy so that she can plant nails under his tyres. Then there's another in which she convinces Mike that she loves him by planting a note for him to find showing his name in a little heart ... aaahhhh ...! Gradually, the big-hearted but garrulous Mike is seduced deeper into Wendy Kroy's web of evil intrigue, involving murder on behalf of deceived and cheated-upon wives. Eventually, Mike Swale is persuaded to kill a Mr. C. Cahill in New York ...

Linda Fiorentino is enchantingly and intoxicatingly wicked as the icily cold-blooded beauty who redefines the terms 'calculating' and 'ruthless.' Bill Pullman and Peter Berg add an element of comic relief as mere cyphers, the objects of her wrath (read: saps), whilst legal eagle J.T. Walsh is just about Bridget's professionally-detached equal in her unconscionably dastardly doings ("Anyone check you for a heartbeat lately?"). The best lines are about Bridget: "I love you ... I'm sure you feel the same way - I'm sure you love you, too" - or from her: Dahl saturates this picture with atmosphere - the incidental music is a near-continuous cool strumming by a cocktail-lounge trio!

THE LAST SEDUCTION was filmed-for-cable (and therefore Fiorentino could not really qualify for any Academy Award nominations) and is far better than most in the genre, thanks to the creative and well-paced unfolding of the plot and character development. It also has a well-written script that reveals just enough of the evil lurking beneath the surface but not too much. Because Steve Barancik deliberately avoids providing us with any easy motivation for Bridget's actions (like, say, a troubled childhood), her amorality becomes all the more questionable - but all the more effective.

Perhaps what makes the maliciously calculating and amoral Bridget Gregory/Wendy Kroy just that teensy-weensy bit endearing after all ... is that her adversaries clearly deserve what they get; they have few, if any, redeeming qualities - they are themselves either too corrupt (Clay), too mean (Harlan), or too naïvely stupid (Mike). One cannot help chuckling with her in the back of the limo ... as she gets away with it ...!