The perfect life of a successful sports agent goes to hell when a mysterious girl detective gets him involved in a dangerous murder investigation. One passionate night with her changes his life forever.
4k movies reviews
Obsession is the essence of erotic thrillers: from the sublime “Fatal Attraction” to tricks that are less pleasant and more straightforward. Well, this sub-genre is so strongly imbued with clichés that it is not easy to take its examples seriously. Nevertheless, despite the widespread proliferation of this kind of movie role, built on the pleasure of debunking and dealing with romantic images of (insane) stalkers, there are fresh projects from time to time. Such is the case with “Dangerous Temptation,” which stepped on probably every possible cliché of the genre, but made an interesting move: the script is unkind to both the antagonist and the protagonist. A curious device in an erotic thriller: the protagonist here is not the most socially pleasant man, but they could not present it properly; still, the tape turned out to be sketchy, confusing and boring.
Former basketball star Derrick has become a big-time sports agent. He’s a millionaire with a big house, a cool car, and a beautiful wife. Derrick hangs out with some bohemian, his partner is his best friend. Despite this, the marriage is bursting at the seams: the wife is not particularly interested in preserving the relationship and, as Derrick believes, is cheating on him. The main character is not a stranger, either, and decides to take off his wedding ring at a party in Vegas in order to find a one-night stand. To his misfortune he hooks up with the charming Valerie, a girl who later takes their fun a little too seriously.
Unfortunately, the most interesting part of this plot setup has never been fully explored. I don’t want to get too specific about it, as there is a risk of going into spoiler territory (in particular the development of Valerie’s relationship and her profession is the most important plot twist), but it looks underwhelming. The second interesting detail is a theory: what would happen to the plot if Derrick recognized the crisis of the current relationship as an opportunity to start a new one? Alas, it doesn’t get the proper development either: instead of going the way of exploring the inner world of the main character, who, by the way, is not the most likable character, “Dangerous Temptation” quickly descends into a mediocre “soap opera”.
The fact is that when it becomes clear that there is something very wrong with Valerie, the plot of “Dangerous Lure” slammed waves of routine in this case, paranoia. Interestingly, Valerie is not made a monster in the flesh, and they even tried to humanize her, but she is not concerned with adding emotionality to the film. Rather, it is an attempt to add character to the persona and show the seriousness of her intentions. But any hope of developing a suspense gradually dissipates, as instead there are only the dialogues loaded with mystery and difficult to perceive, either because of the stereotypical male character or the wooden acting of Hilary Swank.
It’s not so much about the predictability of the development of the script, in which from scene to scene Valerie gets more and more crazy, as it is about the cinematography. Most of the episodes are shot in acid bright sunlight. The scene of the large-scale final confrontation makes you chuckle. Even Derrick’s glamorous house looks unnatural: it looks like it was downloaded from a Sims computer game.
“Dangerous Temptation” is hard to classify: it is a psychological thriller without psychologism or an erotic thriller without eroticism. The storyline makes you cringe at times, but not because of sophistication, but rather because the characters behave like idiots. This would have made sense in a project with a less ambitious premise, but “Dangerous Temptation” reverses the roles of the characters: it’s hard to say that Swank plays the villain, but she’s definitely the antagonist. Nevertheless, the framing story gives her and her vis-a-vis little maneuvering, as the plot holes regarding, especially, the characters’ motivations make one want to take on the role of the characters’ wise friend on the other side of the screen already and scream frantically into the abyss of middle-class American dummy souls, “What are you doing? Don’t go there? ”
Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (58.2 Mb/s)
Resolution: 4K (2160p)
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Audio
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
Subtitles
English, English SDH.
