Jade (1995)

"I do the fucking, I never get fucked."
                          - Richard Crenna

It takes talent to write a movie that's even less impressive than
SHOWGIRLS.  Heaven help us, but original scribe Joe Eszterhas has done
just that.  Hollywood's [choose one: horniest/hairiest/highest-paid]
writer has concocted a "psychological thriller" that's even more absurd
than his last month's appearance on "Larry King Live."  The plot-- a
District Attorney caught in a love triangle with a murder suspect-- is so
convoluted that even director William Friedkin (THE FRENCH CONNECTION) is
reduced to copying car chases from better movies.  And you thought killer
lesbians were bad?  Try Linda Fiorentino as a clinical psychologist
moonlighting as a high-class hooker!  ["But he won't take the medicine,
Doctor."]

JADE is a loss and barely worth the breath to balk at.  Like that other
guy, Eszterhas will be acquitted soon enough.  He'll work in this town
again.  (Though maybe no longer without a rewrite!) If there's *any* fun
to be had, it's imagining how the Hirsute One would've adapted THE SCARLET
LETTER.  Let's see... a blonde Hester Prynne brutally murders the Reverend
Dimmesdale after he discovers her lesbian love affair with Harriet
Hibbins.  For her punishment, she's sold to the Indians and forced to
perform nightly at the New World's newest nightspot, the Totem Pole. 

Who's to say what's a sin in Joe's eyes? 

Grade: D

Copyright 1995 by Michael J. Legeros 

Originally posted to triangle.movies