Director Adrian Lyne enjoys making movies that push sexual and social hot-buttons (from Fatal Attraction to Lolita to Unfaithful), but this time, he really stacks the deck. Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore are a couple of married naifs who go to Vegas because they’re short of cash, and when they find a potential windfall, it’s a lot more than they bargained for.
It comes from suave creepy tycoon Robert Redford (who is surprisingly good as a villain), who famously offers the couple a million bucks for a night with Moore. (In a weird way, the movie anticipates Showgirls, right down to the heroine who rewards herself with a sexy cutaway dress while asserting to whoever will listen that she’s not actually a whore. The difference is that, what Redford really wants is to defile Moore’s heart and soul, while there’s no evidence that anyone in Showgirls even has a heart or soul, just an overwhelming sense of entitlement.) Here, people make terrible decisions, and those decisions have consequences. That includes Redford, whose evil plan backfires when he picks the stupidest couple in creation to corrupt. (Seriously, does no one recognize that the monologue of backstory he uses to humanize himself is totally stolen from Citizen Kane? It’s not like he picked something obscure.)
The movie is stolen by a crass Oliver Platt, as the lawyer who helps Harrelson and Moore get Redford’s offer in writing. Where’s the movie about what that guy would do for a cool million?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJCqOhdzatA]