DVD Review: Femme Fatale (D)

Femme Fatale (2002)
Directed by Brian DePalma
Starring Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Antonia Banderas and Peter Coyote
MPAA: R
Grade: D

Review by Scott Standish

Brian DePalma is one of those directors that either seems to either hit a home run completely out of the park or strike out miserably. He's directed the classic movies Carrie, Scarface, The Untouchables and Mission Impossible. But his last three movies were: Snake Eyes, Mission To Mars and now the incredibly boring Femme Fatale. With all due respect to the man that many like to compare to Alfred Hitchcock, it appears that Mr. DePalma is certainly in a slump.

Femme Fatale aspires to be a modern day Double Indemnity and in fact, the femme fatale of Femme Fatale (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as Laure Ash) is watching the Fred McMurray classic as the movie opens. Laure is central to a huge diamond burglary played out in the middle of the Cannes Film Festival. The heist is a bit ludicrous to begin with and what makes it all the more ridiculous are the drawn out lesbian love scenes that happen throughout. Laure isn't satisfied with one heist, so she moves on to bigger fish when she meets up with the love struck Ambassador Bruce Watts (played by Peter Coyote). Poor Antonio Banderas enters the film at this point and he's dragged through the mud portraying Nicolas Bardo, a scumbag photographer.

The pacing of Femme Fatale is way too slow for a thriller and the score is annoying at times. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is not as bad here as some would have you think, but she is clearly not up to the task of carrying such a role. She comments about how she's "a bad girl that has done bad things" but frankly, that's not very believable. Rebbecca is half naked for most of the movie, and when she's not doing lesbian love scenes, she's doing lap dances for grimy thugs in the basement of biker bars.

A thriller that fails to thrill is a sad thing to behold. Femme Fatale looks like a Roman Polanski film, but doesn't have the acting or script to succeed. Other than Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (for the guys) and Antonio Banderas (for the gals) doing their best to act sexy, there's not much to hang onto here. DePalma has done much better and certainly will do much better than the slow and shallow Femme Fatale.

Buy Femme Fatale On DVD From Amazon.com