By Ned Jordan
Indecent Proposal is a film built around a single question: would you, or
would you want your wife to, sleep with a man for a million dollars?
Unfortunately, the filmmakers didn't really know where to go from there and the
result is a tedious film that's a trial to watch. We're introduced to David and
Diana Murphy
(Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore) and shown that they're a very passionate couple
deeply in love with each other. When the economy of the early 1990s begins to
sour, the highly leveraged Murphys are hit particularly hard and are faced with
losing everything they've worked for. They come up a dubious plan to travel to
Las Vegas to win the $50,000 they need to save their home, which goes about as
well as is to be expected. But just when all appears to be lost, Diana attracts the
attention of free-spending billionaire John Gage (Robert Redford) who makes an offer to the
Murphys of one
million dollars for one night with Diana.
Indecent Proposal's first mistake is that it gets its central conceit out of
the way far too early in the story. David and Diana spend about five minutes discussing
the proposal before deciding to prostitute Diana, which is hard to believe after the
introduction we've had to the supposedly madly in love couple. It's also a major
blunder in that the decision that should have been played out as a
gut-wrenching, soul-searching ordeal that caused the audience to examine its own
moral codes was so quickly spent, leaving little for the movie to go on for the
next ninety plus minutes. After the business deal is transacted and the Murphys
return home, their trust issues quickly push them apart and the rest of the film
is a creepy shell of a romance in which Gage stalks Diana in what would be considered a
disturbing manner to most people, except apparently for Diana who eventually melts
into Gage's arms. You can probably guess how the whole thing ends since it's rather
predictable, but the filmmakers weren't quite sure how to get there and
contrived such a ridiculous ending that it will have you both rolling your eyes and
seething with anger that you wasted your time watching such poorly made dreck.
This is the film's debut on Blu-ray and the picture and sound are good, but
that's about it with this movie. Outside of an audio commentary from the
director Adrian Lyne there aren't any special features. Perhaps they knew
that no one would be interested.
Final Rating:
