The Doctor’s Diagnosis: B-
This is another case where I had never heard of a movie prior to heading to the theater to see it, but it was the only thing playing that I hadn’t seen and that seemed to make it my best option. Fortunately, while it’s nothing groundbreaking, there are far worse ways to spend a couple of hours. Fatale is a solid mix of noir and early 90s thriller clichés that may go a few plot twists too far, but is entertaining and unpredictable enough to warrant a watch on an uneventful evening.
Michael Ealy stars as Derrick, a wealthy sports agent (or something like that) that becomes bored with his marriage. He meets Val (played by Hilary Swank) while in Vegas for work and they have a one-night affair. Shortly thereafter, his house is broken into and the film spirals into a mystery/thriller of seemingly endless plot twists that I will try not to spoil (except for one, but I’ll get to that).
Director Deon Taylor really, really likes thrillers from the 90s. His previous film, 2019’s The Intruder, was an ode to obsessed stalker thrillers from that era like Fatal Attraction or The Fan. I was not a fan of it. Fatale is similarly a tribute to what was commonly called adult thrillers or erotic thrillers or whatever other terms people used to feel better about watching softcore porn in a theater rather than just watching real porn (though, admittedly, watching porn was much more difficult to do back then). These are the kind of flicks that starred Sharon Stone if it went to theaters or Shannon Tweed if it debuted on Cinemax at 2:00am. The film wants you to think that it is a modern noir and it has some of those elements (the title obviously being a nod to the femme fatale trope), but this is a 1994 adult thriller through and through. I didn’t think much of The Maltese Falcon while watching this, but I did think about Basic Instinct and Jade and a whole lot of other shit that I hadn’t thought about since I was a growing boy in the 90s and slow internet speeds meant it took me three hours to download a picture of Jennifer Love Hewitt in a low-cut shirt. It was all we had, goddamn it.
Anyway, while those may not be lofty goals, Fatale works because of a bonkers script and surprisingly strong performances. I am going to give a SPOILER here because I pretty much have to, but the initial plot twist is ruined by the movie’s IMDB page, so it may not be that big of a deal. Immediately after the robbery, it’s revealed that the detective on the case is Hilary Swank herself, who is not too pleased to find out that Derrick is married. Maybe I’m just getting slow in my old age, but I did not see that shit coming and it set up a clever and entertaining dynamic between the characters for the rest of the film. END SPOILER. The film’s remaining 87 plot twists are hit-or-miss; some are quite clever and some are extremely obvious (if you can’t tell who tried to rob the house, then I must assume that you shit your pants in surprise at the end of Blue’s Clues). It’s uneven and just endlessly throws shit at a wall to see what sticks, but I was never bored.
That lack of boredom can also be attributed to Hilary Swank, who seems to be having a fucking blast with this. Some critics have accused her of slumming it with this movie, but those critics are assholes. Not all movies are Oscar-bait, some can just be low-rent thrillers and there’s nothing wrong with that. Swank, despite having a more-elaborate-than-necessary backstory, does a great job of walking the line between sympathetic and psychotic. Not everything that she does makes sense, especially in the last act, but damned if she isn’t giving it her all. This movie also changed my mind and put me firmly on the Jim and Pam side of the Hilary Swank debate.
I absolutely hated The Intruder and feared the worst here, but Fatale is a solid entry in a genre that’s been largely dormant for 25 years or so. Maybe its just the combination of 90s nostalgia and Hilary Swank’s crazy ass, but I had a good time with it. It’s not worth a mad rush to the theater, but it’s worth checking out at home on a rainy night.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatale_(film)#/media/File:Fatale_film_poster.png
