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Flatliners | Year: 1990 Classification: Regisseure - Schumacher, Joel Directed: - Joel Schumacher Actors/Actresses: - Kiefer Sutherland - Julia Roberts - Kevin Bacon - William Baldwin - Oliver Platt - Kavin Bacon - Julia Roberts Became Famous For Her Role In Pretty Woman Surprisingly good I bought this movie recently when I saw it at a store, and realized it was a Julia Roberts film I actually had never heard of. I own many of her movies, and since she and Kiefer Sutherland are two of my favorite actors, I decided to give it a shot.<BR>The first thing that grabs you about this movie is the suspense. Come on, medical students experiencing clinical death (Flatlining) and trying to come back is not a very serene situation to begin with. But when they outbid each other for length of time when deciding who gets to go next, even the viewer begins saying to his/herself "oh, God, don't let him die!!" (I did anyway). With each gorgeous young actor wanting to be dead longer than the previous, it really puts you at the edge of your seat. As if this weren't enough, all these people that "died" and came back begin being haunted by their past sins and misdeeds, and are mentally, even physically, harmed by them.<BR>This movie features Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Julia Roberts, Billy Baldwin and Oliver Platt in much younger, and more dangerous, roles than I've seen most of them play. It's a great movie for a younger audience, and probably only for people with a more open mind to horror and death. A last note: Kiefer Sutherland has a great first line. Don't try this at home The premise of this horror lite venture in movie making is that if one is dead for only a few minutes and then brought back to life before the brain damage sets in, one might very well experience what it's like being dead, and that experience might be glorious and one might learn something nobody else knows, or at least something to tell them about on Sixty Minutes. Anyway, this is what med student Nelson Wright, played with energy and intensity by Kiefer Sutherland, thinks. Somehow he convinces four other med students, Joe Hurley (William Baldwin), David Labraccio (Kevin Bacon), Rachel Mannus (Julia Roberts), and Randy Steckle (Oliver Platt) to help him out. Problem number one is that I don't think director Joel Schumacher sold this shaky premise sufficiently. We really need to believe that this group of med students could be flaky enough to risk their careers and their lives for an iffy few minutes of a supposed after life experience. For me it just wasn't happening, and I think that is why this movie starts slow and remains relatively unfocused for the first twenty minutes or so. Problem number two is the casting of Julia Roberts as Rachel Mannus. This was the same year she did Pretty Woman (1990) with Richard Gere and became a box office sensation. She looks gorgeous in the dark red and blue tinted lights, but it's not enough to put some specs on her and make us believe she's a daredevil pre med student. And let me ask you this, mightn't all that serious hair get in the way when she slices into those cadavers? She is one of my favorites with that face like no other, but her work here was limited, inconsistent and a bit preoccupied. Still Julia is always worth watching. Problem number three is the lighting. All that dim lighting just doesn't mesh well with med school chic. Med students like to see what they're doing when they're digging into all that viscera. And if your job is to bring a friend back from the dead, you want a clean, well-lighted room, please. Okay, putting all that aside, and accepting the premise, just how bad was this movie? Well, not all that bad really. The cast does a good job, particularly Sutherland who was apparently psyched for the part, and Bacon. The idea that we are responsible for our actions and must pay the consequences for evils done to others is a compelling notion well illustrated. I particularly liked the haunting of Joe Hurley by all the girls he hustled and told lies to and videotaped without their knowledge. Those babes are looking a little ugly now, dude. Call it karma. The little boy who stalks Nelson Wright is chilling and Rachel Mannus's depressing father is very sad. After a bit the movie even gets a little scary. But I had a thought en route: What if we substitute the post death experience of the participants in this little star chamber club with some bad acid trips? How much would their experience differ, really? Bottom line: I don't think TV's "Fear Factor" is going to be featuring this one anytime soon. But wouldn't they love to do it? Think of the ratings. Anyway, this is a mild diversion for a rainy afternoon, thanks mainly to a fine cast. A remarkable work, in spite of itself This movie is not exactly high on people's lists of Great Horror, but as a scientific-religious allegory it's sheer brilliance. The themes first explored in the original Frankenstein come back to haunt: that being the idea that the seeker of knowledge who stops at nothing to gain that knowledge should beware as the object of his desire may turn and bite him in the end. Keifer Sutherland is a young, arrogant medical student who cajoles his friends into playing what might be termed the Ultimate Game of Chicken: explore the afterlife through "flatlining" (i.e., artificially inducing a temporary state of medical death, followed by revival). It's sticking your nose in the Ultimate Don't Go Here Door, and he and his buddies--Oliver Platt, William Baldwin, the then-still-exquisite Julia Roberts (and her two friends, Port and Starboard), and of course Kevin Bacon, with whom they are all within One Degree of Separation From--discover that God Is Not Amused at trespassers. As each of them flatline, they explore the other side, then discover that when they come back to this world they are facing a world unexpected and unknown: the Real World, where their sins (yes! Sin! A three letter word NEVER heard in the movies anymore) come back and literally haunt them. Bacon is plagued by a child he once tormented; Baldwin, by the women he secretly filmed during sex (a sort of Sex, Truth, and Videotape Kodak moment). Roberts is seared by the memory of her father's suicide, and as for Sutherland... well, I have to leave SOME things undescribed. Let it stand that He Has a Little Secret and That Little Secret Is Seriously Pi... er, Ticked. What's remarkable about this film are the little things--the scene where Roberts is reunited with her father as the viewer can almost taste the wine of forgiveness; the moment where Bacon's victim, now grown to full womanhood and obviously as tough as nails, roasts him for an instant with her eyes, then sheds tears in remitting his wrong to her. Baldwin gets it between the eyes from every woman he has filmed, and then fifty times worse from his fiancee. But what makes all of this fit together is a moment of revelation by Sutherland, when he reveals that Bacon "has found the answer to our karmic problems. Atonement, gentlemen." The overall dark style, reminiscent of the later Badman films (that was supposed to read Batman, but I think I'll leave the typo unchanged) works most of the time, although the first time we encounter Sutherland's dog we see artwork on the walls that is best described as hideous-cheapie... but you take a horror flick as you get it. The idea that "everything matters, everything we do matters," is a message that Hollywood would rather not repeat. But it's true, and to anyone raised on a steady diet of Old Fashioned Catholic Guilt, it's not necessarily a bad thing to be reminded of occasionally. Sister Mary Brimstone may have been a nasty old bat, but she DID teach the truth about why we're in business. This movie is a small reminder of why. I've seen comparisons to THE SIXTH SENSE; but young Haley Osborne would not have been a good addition to this cast. Aside from t Buy Flatliners at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on Flatliners Search with the Priority Search Engine on Flatliners This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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