Would you nominate an actor for best performance in a movie where he is the only good thing about it? That's the question I have about James Wood in this disappointing movie about drug abuse among the successful business people of real estate where he is incredible and mesmerizing to watch but the script surrounding him is meandering and possibly the reason why the movie has self-destructed like its two leading characters.
At the beginning of the film, Woods is seeing trying to illicit business down near Wall Street, passive aggressively self-serving but obviously ambitious and determined. With New York a hard City to conquer in the real estate world, he decides to pack up wife Sean Young and move to the less hectic world of Los Angeles where she can move from executive assistant to pursuing a ballet career. Even there however, the high-strung world it is too much for these young upstarts to handle, and they end up in a world of drug abuse which includes freebasing.
Woods has a sudden overdose, one of the scariest examples of that on screen, but he is cured way too fast, not a fault of his performance but the movie. I have witnessed such an overdose occur and they do not get up and walk away within 24 hours. Their business world which leads to a lavish social life is a pretentious environment for a young married couple to try to achieve success in, and the people surrounding them are completely amoral. Young becomes addicted as well, but she never convinces in that area. In fact, she barely seems to be giving me performance rather than just walking through the whole thing.
This is a very frustrating movie because it could have been very helpful to young people trying to climb the ladder of success to know what to avoid and certainly the type of people to not become involved with. Woods is mesmerizing, and at times, his performance is extremely scary. But a movie like this does not depend on the excellence of one person. There must be more then just one element to make it memorable. This isn't even camp so it can't even be called the "Valley of the Dolls" of the 80's. Woods is the reason why I give this a 3 out of 10 stars, and as a result, it still Remains probably one of the worst films of 1988 not to mention the 80's.
At the beginning of the film, Woods is seeing trying to illicit business down near Wall Street, passive aggressively self-serving but obviously ambitious and determined. With New York a hard City to conquer in the real estate world, he decides to pack up wife Sean Young and move to the less hectic world of Los Angeles where she can move from executive assistant to pursuing a ballet career. Even there however, the high-strung world it is too much for these young upstarts to handle, and they end up in a world of drug abuse which includes freebasing.
Woods has a sudden overdose, one of the scariest examples of that on screen, but he is cured way too fast, not a fault of his performance but the movie. I have witnessed such an overdose occur and they do not get up and walk away within 24 hours. Their business world which leads to a lavish social life is a pretentious environment for a young married couple to try to achieve success in, and the people surrounding them are completely amoral. Young becomes addicted as well, but she never convinces in that area. In fact, she barely seems to be giving me performance rather than just walking through the whole thing.
This is a very frustrating movie because it could have been very helpful to young people trying to climb the ladder of success to know what to avoid and certainly the type of people to not become involved with. Woods is mesmerizing, and at times, his performance is extremely scary. But a movie like this does not depend on the excellence of one person. There must be more then just one element to make it memorable. This isn't even camp so it can't even be called the "Valley of the Dolls" of the 80's. Woods is the reason why I give this a 3 out of 10 stars, and as a result, it still Remains probably one of the worst films of 1988 not to mention the 80's.