THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 26, 1994 TAG: 9408260078
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BRENT A. BOWLES, TEENOLOGY MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
THE CHARACTERS played by Bruce Willis and Jane March just aren't interesting when they're dressed. Even the ``controversial'' love scenes between them aren't much.
It all seems to be much ado about nothing. That is exactly what can be said for ``Color of Night.''
Willis stars as Bill Capa, an emotionally high-strung psychologist who inadvertently causes a patient to jump out of his office window. Weak in spirit, Bill goes to L.A. to visit an old college bud who's also in the shrink biz. When Bobby is gruesomely murdered, Bill decides to live in his buddy's house and solve the murder.
Willis is believable to a point, but his emotions get too heavy too often, and he becomes more sappy than anything else. He also has problems seeing red, and this Hitchcockian twist is unnecessary and periodically forgotten.
The twisty plot involves the five patients in the murdered friend's therapy group. Bill tries to pick the killer from among them. The patients are flamboyantly played and are just as overemotional as Willis.
Lesley Ann Warren is a nymphomaniac with a real hair problem; Lance Henriksen plays the ex-cop who is stricken from the death of his wife and looks about 90. The best of the lot is Brad Dourif as an obsessive-compulsive lawyer.
And along comes March as Rose, a mystery woman who turns out to be a crazed schizo. She is brazenly sexy and as attractive and seductive as she was in the Jean-Jacques Annaud's ``The Lover.'' But as this 121-minute opus of skin and psychosis continues, her character becomes less and less believable, almost to the point of being laughable.
The best performance of the film is Ruben Blades as a cop investigating the murder. He practically chews the scenery off the screen, and steals every scene he's in. If every performance in the film had been this good, we would have been mildly entertained.
Directed by Richard Rush, ``Color of Night'' is a dark, erotic thriller that just can't seem to get its act together. It jumps sporadically from scenes of high drama to loud action to steamy love scenes. The story, as it unfolds, becomes deliciously deep, but the delivery is so flat that the appealing qualities are lost. This film is so darkly photographed that I kept checking to see if I was still wearing sunglasses. What's the point in trying to create suspense if you can't see what's going on in the first place?
The finale is totally ludicrous, but by this time, my mind was so numbed by the experience that I laughed and stared at the screen, wondering if this was really happening.
``Color of Night'' has a deep plot full of potential, but the filmmakers have gone for the dark, shadowy film noir look and turned this into a semi-bomb. The love scenes are pretty explicit by today's standards, but the purpose of all this escapes me. When the sight of March with nothing on but a little lace apron-like thing is extremely funny, you know your brain is beginning to run. If you're really into this sort of thing, check your brain at the door and enjoy. MEMO: Brent Bowles is a 1994 graduate of Princess Anne High entering James
Madison University this fall. ``Color of Night'' is rated R. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Brent A. Bowles
by CNB