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Dec 28, 2019loella rated this title 0.5 out of 5 stars
If you can last longer than the half-hour or so that I did at watching this over-budgeted, overly stylish B-movie "thriller", you're a better a person than I. American mainstream movies were at an all-time low, generally, in the last quarter of the twentieth century (many say they have only gotten worse since). Brian de Palma is not as much to blame for that as many another good director (or all of the suits in Hollywood at the time, probably), but his lack of imagination, mostly, doom most of his films to a long-term viewership of sociologists and cultural analysts rather than movie lovers. Criterion's two-disc release of the movie and extras rather emphasizes de Palma's weaknesses, especially in the extra that compares the uncut, the R-rated, and the network TV versions of several violent and erotic scenes; the uncut versions are inferior in every instance: too blatant, too unrealistic, less shocking. --Ray Olson