Bovie Movie

Skip Woods made his directorial debut with this film, caught in a crossfire between thriller and comedy. After violence is unleashed in the opening sequence, the story settles on former L.A. drug dealer Casey Wells (Thomas Jane), now a Houston architect living with his attractive wife Christine (Paula Marshall). When past partner Nick (Aaron Eckhart) arrives out of the blue on a Thursday, asking for a place to stay for a few days, Casey invites him in but later gets curious about Nick’s briefcase. After he opens it to find a huge helping of heroin, panic sets in, and he flushes it all away — setting the stage for a variety of hoods and hitmen to turn up on Casey’s suburban doorstep. Shown at the 1998 Toronto World Festival.

A late-career change of heart leads to a dangerous life on the run for two seasoned assassins whose complex relationship masks a dark past in director Lee Daniels’ pulpy film noir. When Mickey (Cuba Gooding Jr.) was just a child, his abusive father savagely murdered the young boy’s mother shortly before being gunned down by Rose (Helen Mirren), Mickey’s stepmother. Twenty years later, Mickey and Rose are not only working together as hired killers, but they have grown to become lovers as well. When Rose discovers she is dying of terminal cancer and becomes addicted to morphine, her conscience soon prompts her to reevaluate her murderous ways. Assigned the task of taking out Vickie (Vanessa Ferlito), the wife of local crime boss Clayton (Stephen Dorff), Mickey and Rose are unable to complete their mission upon discovering that Vickie is pregnant. With the tragedy of the past threatening to lock Mickey, Rose, and their reluctant charge into a tragic cycle of death and deceit, the reluctant killers attempt to make amends for their violent past by protecting Vickie’s unborn child and allowing Rose one last chance at redemption.

This cold, stylish erotic-thriller grossed over $100 million at the box-office despite vigorous protests at its depiction of gays and women. The shocking opening sequence features a graphic sexual encounter involving a rock-star bound with a white Hermes scarf by an unidentified blond woman. Despite the fact that the scene ends with a bloody icepick murder (horrifyingly realized by makeup artist Rob Bottin), Hermes scarves quickly sold out at stores nationwide. This seeming paradox is at the heart of the film’s appeal, as it mixes perverse sexuality and erotic bloodshed in a manner common to European thrillers (director Paul Verhoeven had done it himself in 1979’s marvelous De Vierde Man) but mostly taboo in America. The plot concerns Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), a successful bisexual mystery writer who may also be a ruthless murderer. Everyone close to Catherine dies, and troubled policeman Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) must find out why. In the process, Nick becomes sexually involved with both Catherine and police psychiatrist Beth Gardner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), while the bodies begin piling up and Catherine turns the cat-and-mouse game around on Nick. Verhoeven and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas — who was paid $3 million for the script — keep the tension ratcheted up throughout, even during the frequent sex scenes, which carry a violent edge reminiscent of the Italian thrillers of Dario Argento. The film’s most notorious scene, a police interrogation in which Catherine makes drooling idiots out of her captors by revealing that she is not wearing underwear, became a cultural touchstone and was widely imitated and parodied. Sharon Stone, meanwhile, was embarrassed to the point that she claimed Verhoeven had aimed lights on strategic locations without her knowledge. George Dzundza and Dorothy Malone co-star.