Sliver

Written by: Joe Esterhazs Starring: Sharon Stone, William Baldwin, Tom Berenger

About as deep as a poker chip, and a lot less interesting. Are these movies a kind of punishment for some unutterable sin we've committed? I cannot fathom the Industry's infatuation with Esterhazs, who keeps proving that he cannot write a good story to save his skin (or his skinflick). Oh I'm sorry, did I mention story? That's the thing that is conspicuously absent from this picture. It is just a bunch of amateurish scenes sloppily staged for the presumed titillation of the good folks in Kansas. Personally I give them a lot more credit than that; I bet they see right through this crap. I swear that this is at the level of the lowest TV movie. No real mystery, just: there are two guys--whodunit? Like we care at this point. There aren't even any surprising plot twists, unless you count the vapid ending, and I do not. I sat watching this picture, wondering when Esterhazs was going to finish his setup and get to the meat of the story. Then, about an hour into it, I realized he wasn't; SETUP WAS ALL HE HAD. The sad truth is the movie isn't even scary. The sad truth is, it's boring.

The sad truth is that the oh-so-hip dialogue between Stone and her buddy is so plastic they'll be making picnic utensils out of it next week. (Wow, a reference to Pearl Jam--gee Joe, you must be COOOOOOL.) (Spare me.) Talented ninth graders write better stuff than this. And, oh yeah, just exactly why did the killer kill victims anyway? It wasn't entirely clear to me. And was the old guy actually murdered, or did the silly coot really slip in the shower? Gosh, the questions just keep piling up. So let's get to the big question: how's the highly vaunted sex? I tried, I mean I really tried, to warm up to it.

But it's a jag, man, a fake and a tease, a little tit and giggle. Sharon and Billy are an attractive couple, but that doesn't make their hot tupping any less contrived and stilted. If this is the best Hollywood can do with erotica, I say here's to pornography! This is Eros seen through the bleary, bourbon-soaked gaze of a true cashier of the heart. The hardest hooker would seem an irredemptive romantic by comparison. You get hotter stuff in any--and I mean ANY--girlie magazine. The only thing worse than the picture itself is the disturbing notion that the filmmakers believed they were delivering some kind of message about the hollowness of substituting other peoples' lives for ones own. How else to interpret the big scene where Sharon gets to play with (and emote about) the video toys? Not to mention her devastating putdown of Billy at the end (I won't spoil it for you)? To answer the smarmy and all too ubiquitous question: Yes, I do like to watch---almost anything but this. (6/3/93)