Someone to Watch Over Me (1987)
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Someone to Watch Over Me Movie Review
Someone to Watch Over Me is a 1987 neo-noir romantic thriller film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Berenger, Mimi Rogers and Lorraine Bracco. It’s a mediocre picture.
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“You’re gonna realize, marriage is an idea whose time has come and gone“
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Mike, a married police officer, is assigned to protect Claire, a wealthy socialite, who is a witness in a murder case. A he spends more time with Claire, Mike starts falling in love with her. First off, I am not the biggest fan of neo-noir movies. I love classic noir, but I have a hard time finding modern noir movies that successfully pull that atmosphere off. This one is another failure in that regard.
It was odd that Ridley Scott directed this movie, but he is a filmmaker who has dabbled at numerous different genres after all, here trying to do a thriller and failing at it. Let’s start with the positives first, which are not numerous unfortunately. One is the technical aspects. The cinematography is gorgeous, the production design is splendid and the score is fittingly noirish, making for a very cool-looking and sounding movie that at least somewhat compensated for the weak plot.
I also really liked the supporting performance from Lorraine Bracco, who was terrific as the betrayed wife. She plays an archetype, but at least she was quite memorable in the role. But the other two are much less interesting as Tom Berenger is unlikable and annoying while Mimi Rogers plays the thinnest character of the bunch.
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The romance also sadly did not work between those two. The movie tried to be sensual, but it’s only sporadically successful in that regard. Too often, it was just plain boring, monotonous and too slowly paced to make a bigger impact. For a thriller, it is decidedly not exciting. It is so leisurely paced, so dull and so familiar in its tiresome storyline that we’ve seen countless times before that it ended up being a shore to sit through. It was a rare misfire from Scott.
With Someone to Watch Over Me Ridley Scott tried to do a neo-noir thriller, but he mostly failed at that task as the movie is so boring, slow and unexciting. The technical aspects are terrific as the film both looks and sounds fantastic, but it wasn’t enough to compensate for underwritten characters, a tediously familiar plot and a definite lack of thrills plaguing this supposed thriller throughout.
My Rating – 2.5
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