Color of Night (1994)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Absolutely Fantastic

Absolutely brilliant

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

A color-blind psychiatrist Bill Capa is stalked by an unknown killer after taking over his murdered friend's therapy group, all of whom have a connection to a mysterious young woman that Capa begins having intense sexual encounters with. Lot's of Sex and weird murders make Color of Night a weird combination of thriller meets romance and seeing Bruce Willis naked with another woman making love to her was kind of weird to be honest. It worked for Stallone but Willis? Meh. (0/10)

Truly, this is the quintessential '90's film. The erotic thriller genre was very popular then. To be honest, the nudity is the biggest let-down of the film. I think that if you're gonna make a boner film, make a lustful film. The shots of the sex are not even erotic at all. Sure, people will say, "There's tons of sex and nudity". It seems too overdone and / or artsy. Jane March is one sexy lady, but it seemed at times that Willis was the one driving the relationship. There wasn't really a romantic chemistry between them (of course given that Bill Capa is troubled at the time due to a patient's suicide, this would be a healing type of casual sex). What makes it worse is that the uncut version, which I own, only makes the silly nudity discount much of the movie. I see now why the director only wanted to release the conventional version b/c it adds nothing to the movie!The grittiness of the story is what holds this work up on itself. This is a very dark movie. At times, the acting other than the leads (I'm talking about Bruce Willis and Scott Bakula who I also like) is a bit much. As usual, the 3rd tier actors try to outdo each other and especially during the therapy sessions, their immaturity shows.Not for kids! If you're like me, if you like boundary pushing, this is your film. All frat boys around the country should be forced to watch this movie! Me and my buddy from High School watched this movie together, and that became a gag between us during senior year! Good times!

It's a well-acted, well-directed, and well-photographed study of a handful of neurotics, their shrink, and the homicidal maniac who gums up the works.Willis is the shrink who takes over the leadership in the therapy group when his friend is brutally murdered. The general sense is that one of the group did it, but no one knows which one.Richard Rush directed "The Stuntman," an exceptionally fine film, more than a decade earlier and this represents his return. I imagine that Rush is responsible for the sunny location shooting in LA and for the evocative production design. The house -- if that's what it is -- that Willis takes over from his deceased friend is a massive structure fitted out with expensive toys. I wouldn't like to think that all LA shrinks live like that. He's also been very careful about certain details. The color red, for instance. We don't see it that often but when we do it's fully saturated, fluorescent, and stands out like nobody's business, turning a woman's lips into something almost frightening.Rush is also responsible for some extraordinary shots that needlessly call attention to themselves. A crushed body lies bleeding on a New York street, and Rush places the camera several feet BENEATH the corpse and shoots upward through a transparent pavement.The story itself is quite well done, carried along as much by the performers as by the plot. Jane March shows up to become Willis' main squeeze and play a pivotal role at the end. There is considerable gratuitous nudity which I enjoyed immensely. Not Bruce Willis' butt, to which I'm totally indifferent, but March's slender, girlish figure.It's a decent mystery but has a couple of flaws, one of them lethal. Among the gigs are two pointless car chases through the streets of Los Angeles -- and I mean pointless because nothing comes of either. In another scene, Willis' car is pushed out of a high-rise parking lot and almost crushes him on the ground ten stories below. He escapes the falling vehicle and the mass of flying wreckage it creates by running away from it, in slow motion, towards the camera. (Ho hum.) The plot is full of hidden holes, so many and so subtle that they slip by almost unnoticed. Egs., how can Willis simply move into his friend's mansion, drive his car, and in effect take over his identity. He had a license to practice in New York state. Now he decides, on a whim, to practice in California? Without wrestling with red tape from the state and from the rabid and proprietary American Psychological Association? The difficulties aren't even alluded to. The APA wouldn't even let me become a member, let alone a fellow, although I have a doctorate in clinical psychology. They didn't like the school I'd gone to. The plot was sometimes so turgid that I was lost. (Maybe a second viewing.) The climactic confrontation involves the deployment of a nail gun and an electric drill and the circumstances destroy the movie completely, turning it into an ill-conceived and confusing action movie with thunder and lightning, tottering on the lip of a long fall, and all the other accouterments. What a disappointment.Nope. This isn't "The Stuntman." But I'm reluctant to blame the film's weaknesses on the director alone. He hadn't made a movie in fourteen years and it's very likely that the producers kept him on a tight leash. It happens. In "The Godfather," the scene in which Carlo beats hell out of his pregnant wife, using a belt, was not Francis Ford Coppola's idea. The producers insisted on an "action" scene at that point in the story because they were afraid it might otherwise be too sluggish for the audience. I can easily imagine something like that happening here.The characters are diverse and colorful, mostly in a quiet way, but Ruben Blades' cop enlivens every scene he's in -- profane, ironic, earthy. Jane March is a dish. She shares something with another cast member, Leslie Ann Warren. Their grins are filled with gleaming chiclets, the size of squares on a chess board. Between the two of them, they could gnaw through an iron bolt as easily as a corn cob at an Iowa picnic. Willis holds up his end well, and so do the members of his group, including Brad Douriff as a lawyer with OCD. He was my costar in "Blue Velvet" so I'm compelled to give him bonus points.

This film begins with promise. The stellar cast list seems impressive and there's an intriguing air of mystery. But it rapidly disintegrates into afternoon TV clichés. The plot is asinine. The dialogue is so weak that it fails even to drive the plot let alone give any depth to the characters. Where there is characterisation it is woefully shallow. And the eventual denouement with its shlock horror and tired Hitchcock clichés is risible.Poor Jane March seems to be there only for the director to show her body off with the scriptural subtlety of a porn film. And the rest of the usually excellent cast do their best. But as they say here in the UK - you can't polish a t**d....