The new breed of psychological thriller announces itself by three unmistakable signs: Armani suits, intimations of roaringly perverse sado-masochistic relationships, and Richard Gere.
It also helps if the action takes place in back-lit semidarkness, as if the characters, having spent all of their resources on clothes and interior design, had fallen seriously behind in their Commonwealth Edison payments.
All of these elements are present in ”Final Analysis,” a silly, slow-moving film directed with technical polish but utter soullessness by Phil Joanou, of ”Three O`Clock High” and ”State of Grace.”
Gere is also one of the film`s executive producers, which probably explains why he gets to play an intellectual this time-a high-minded San Francisco psychologist, to be exact, who specializes in crafting insanity defenses for his best friend, a criminal lawyer (Paul Guilfoyle), when he is not selflessly devoting himself to counseling troubled teenagers.
As Dr. Isaac Barr, Gere communicates the character`s massive mental powers by speaking extremely slowly, as if he were carefully selecting each and every word he utters from the Roget`s Thesaurus he carries in his cranium. Isaac`s most challenging client of the moment is the beautiful but deeply disturbed Diana Baylor (Uma Thurman, with hollow eyes and unwashed hair). Looking for clues to Diana`s neurosis-she may or may not have been molested by her father when she was a child-Isaac agrees to meet with his patient`s sister, who shows up unannounced at his romantically underlit office late one evening and turns out to be a bombshell (Kim Basinger, closely miked and campily breathy).
Unable to find anything about sleeping with the close relatives of patients in the psychologist`s code of ethics, Isaac throws himself into a torrid affair with the sultry yet vulnerable Heather.
Not all is jake, however, for it develops that Heather is married-to thuggish, sinister, fabulously wealthy and violently jealous real estate developer Jimmy Evans (Eric Roberts, casting his mind back to his psycho performance in ”Star 80”).
Jimmy`s unspeakable brutality is conveyed in one memorable sequence, in which he pauses in his exercise routine, lights a crackling cigarette, and orders his wife to take off her clothes (slowly!) and perform a series of unimaginable acts just out of camera range.
Meanwhile, director Joanou has been dropping in highly emphatic closeups of seemingly unimportant objects-the handle of a barbell, bottles of cough medicine, a loose bolt in a lighthouse staircase, a rut in a country road-that indicate major plot points are being planted, and none too subtly.
The payoff comes, finally, when Jimmy turns up dead-floating face down in his Jacuzzi-and Gere is called upon to concoct an insanity defense for his beloved, centered on something called ”psychotic intoxication.” Heather, it seems, loses all control when she ingests even the slightest bit of alcohol, and cannot be held accountable for her actions.
No more accountable is screenwriter Wesley Strick, who also wrote that most shallow and numbingly violent of Martin Scorsese films, ”Cape Fear.”
The action that follows the murder jettisons even the minimal standards of plausibility that have prevailed so far, requiring both an unbroken chain of wild coincidences and that each of the major characters undergoes a complete psychological transformation. One or the other might be permitted, but both is pushing things, even in a trashy thriller.
What is genuinely chilling about ”Final Analysis” lies not in the foolish plotting but in the completely callous attitude of the director and writer, who are interested in their characters only as compositional elements or, at best, game pieces to be pushed around a board. It`s a cold, distant work of no compassion and, finally, no importance.
”Final Analysis”
(STAR)(STAR)
Directed by Phil Joanou; written by Wesley Strick; photographed by Jordan Cronenweth; production designed by Dean Tavoularis; edited by Thom Noble;
music by George Fenton; produced by Charles Roven and Paul Junger Witt & Tony Thomas. A Warner Brothers release; opens Feb. 7 at the Water Tower, Webster Place and outlying theaters. Running time: 2:02. MPAA rating: R. Violence, strong language, adult situations, brief nudity.
THE CAST
Isaac Barr…………………………………………Richard Gere
Heather Evans………………………………………Kim Basinger
Diana Baylor………………………………………..Uma Thurman
Jimmy Evans………………………………………..Eric Roberts
Mike`O Brien……………………………………..Paul Guilfoyle
