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Starring Linda Fiorentino, Bill Pullman. There should be a rule for motion pictures stating that if a character has just stolen a million dollars in cash from their husband, that person has got to be able to pick an alias that their husband will not be able to think of while sitting in the bathroom. As a matter of fact, had I just stolen a million dollars in cash from my spouse, I would call myself a name as far from my original name as was humanly possible: Kumar Yaghnam, Rafael Espironza, or Ken Griffey Jr. would do nicely.The Last Seduction was, at worst, an amusing film. The only flaw in The Last Seduction is director John Dahl's indecision about what this film wanted to accomplish; at times Dahl seemed to be parodying up state new Yorkers, in much the same manner Fargo lampooned midwesterners, while at other times, he seemed to be trying hard for noir status. In the end though, The Last Seduction shines as a dark comedy. Linda Fiorentino stars as character a couple of levels icier than any number of scantily clad characters whom Sharon Stone has portrayed in past movies. At first, Fiorentino's coldness was unnerving, but as I began to sense that Fiorentino's character was supposed to be so completely over the top she could well have been a cartoon, I began to smile at her heartless actions. Once I realized that the rest of the characters in The Last Seduction were merely stereotypical characters, whose beliefs and stereotypes had been inflated to their maximum proportions, this film took on its comically understated flavor. So when city girl Fiorentino steals the aforementioned million bones from her husband, played with a wonderfully naiveté by Bill Pullman, she retreats to a quiet country town in up state New York called Beston. The people in Beston are all small town rubes. There are no exceptions anywhere. The Bestonites complain about living in the sticks, but when they do try to live in the big city (the big city in this case being Buffalo) they return to Beston quickly, with their tails between their legs, trying not to bring up the unspeakable atrocities that had occurred, and, dammit, I laughed. Screenwriter Steve Barancik has written a script about such pompous and laughable parodies of the types of characters that are normally found in mysteries and thrillers that when bad things happen to the characters, you can't help but be amused. Throw these delectable characters into a tangled web of murder, sex, and money and you've got yourself a picture. The Last Seduction was enjoyable from several different perspectives, and with its dark script and a heaping plate of dry humor, easily outdistances the other "Let's Have Sex and Kill My Husband" movie, Body Heat. See this one.
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