An '80s sensibility meets '50s sitcom humor in this movie starring Murphy as a womanizing executive at a cosmetics company. He's got a great apartment, extensive gadgetry and a very successful seducer's line: noisome flattery, the proffering of a single rose and pretty lies.
The worm quite literally turns when Givens is hired as Murphy's boss in a job he had staked out as his own. Smitten, Murphy moves in for the kill only to learn that Givens is as callous with men as he is with women; she doesn't call him for weeks, is coolly indifferent to his feelings, discusses with her friends his performance in bed. In short, she treats him like a sex object.
While it's refreshing to see black characters portrayed in positions of consequence, this is basically a very tired tale of role reversal, revenge and redemption. There is a lack of inventiveness and cohesiveness to Boomerang, a fact apparently not lost on director Reginald (House Party) Hudlin and writers Barry W. Blaustein and David Sheffield (collaborators on Coming to America), who, uncertain how to move from one sequence to the next, end almost every scene with a fade-out.
Still, a blank screen is preferable to such shots as Grace Jones (as a haughty French model) removing her panties and throwing them at a man who has annoyed her, or of a middle-aged man whose finger licking at the dinner table is clearly not to be construed as praise for the meal. Givens plays a role couture-cut for her limited talent, that of a cooing femme fatale, but she is no more bearable for all that. The ravishing Halle Berry, one of the few bright spots in last year's Strictly Business, which Boomerang passingly resembles, is terrifically appealing as the woman Murphy comes to love.
Murphy can outmug anyone in the business, but however effective he is as a smart aleck, he is relentlessly unconvincing as a lovesick suitor. Those who can overlook Murphy's lapses and who enjoy scenes of unremitting crudity will find much to savor in Boomerang. Others are advised to belly up to another box office. (R)
Samuel Fröler, Pernilla August
Ingmar Bergman, who hasn't directed a theatrical film since 1982's Fanny and Alexander, wrote this dramatized story of his parents' lives. And there is poetic justice in it: Bergman, whose 1973 Scenes from a Marriage is the definitive movie about a deteriorating relationship, has now provided the base for an equally memorable film—directed by Bille (Pelle the Conqueror) August—about a romance that endures even when it doesn't thrive.
Fröler, a Swedish TV star, plays Bergman's father, a theology student in Uppsala whose poverty-stricken childhood defines his courtship with the daughter of a patrician family (Pernilla August, wife of the director). The couple have to overcome not only the normal obstacles to romance but class snobbery and a general strike that complicates their lives once Fröler becomes a minister in a small Swedish factory town.
Throughout, Bergman sets up a series of vivid, literate confrontations involving Fröler, August and other articulated characters. Director August stages these tense, intimate, emotional wrestling matches with naturalistic fervor, and the actors, including Max von Sydow as August's world-weary father, are uniformly marvelous.
The film ends with August pregnant with the baby who would be Ingmar, so he never has to try to characterize himself. Otherwise, though, Bergman displays his enduring ability to filter out transitory phenomena and concentrate on the immediate, profound events that change people's lives. (Unrated) (In Swedish with subtitles)
Kurt Russell, Ray Liotta, Madeleine Stowe
Late one night, Liotta, a Los Angeles cop, savagely wallops an unarmed black criminal suspect with his nightstick. "He resisted," the cop explains to an incredulous bystander. That scene has a brutish, visceral impact that's missing from the rest of this undistinguished thriller.
Unlawful is about a cop (Liotta) who sets up an honest citizen (Russell) because he covets the guy's wife (Stowe). Their paths first cross when the cop investigates a robbery at the couple's posh house and starts making eyes at the wife. Soon, Russell, playing a real estate developer, finds waiters telling him that his credit cards have maxed out and his car has been booted for unpaid parking tickets. Coincidence? He thinks not. And he knows not, once Liotta puts a gun to his head and asks, "What are you gonna do? Call a cop?"
Director Jonathan (The Accused) Kaplan has said he wanted this to be a movie about class tensions, the uniformed working man versus the yupster. Dream on, buddy. Unlawful is simply about a guy gone seriously wacko. The thinness of both the characters and the plot becomes especially apparent in the film's completely predictable denouement. (R)
- Contributors:
- Joanne Kaufman,
- Ralph Novak,
- Leah Rozen.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
