Femme Fatale

A pretty good film, but there were some flaws. DePalma's stylish thriller is incredible in the beginning. Not much dialogue, beautifully filmed action sequences set to an incredible score of Ravel's Bolero. There is an amazing use of water imagery in this movie which has me perplexed. Lots of water trickling over glass facades, fish tanks flooding over. Very nice. Another scene in the film is reminiscent of Hitchcock's 1959 thriller "North by Northwest". DePalma borrows heavily from Hitchcock's bag of cinematography, all to great effect. It's a shame that partway through this film and especially at the end, there seem to be a lapse of this greatness in not only the actors but in the filming and storyline. This could have been a really great movie, but something went wrong. Perhaps the inclusion of John Stamo's voice was a sign that something was crucially wrong here. I still think this was worth seeing, I was really pleasently surprised as I expected Hollywood and instead got a bit of Cannes mixed in. Worth a look on video for most but I recommend the big screen for Die hard DePalma fans. (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is incendiary in a couple of the scenes, well worth the price of admission) and as Conan would exclaim "Stammmmmmmos! ".