Review
Jesse Handy
Staff Writer
Once in a great while, there comes a film that deepens your appreciation of film as an art and increases your respect for the medium as a whole. One Night Stand isn't it. I came, I saw, it sucked.
The excuse for a story here involves Max Carlyle, a married, healthy and wealthy commercial director (Wesley Snipes) who makes a trip to the Big Apple and falls into a strange affair with Karen (Nastassja Kinski), who is also married. Both vow to forget about it, but since it is the movies, you know that's never gonna happen. High drama ensues.
While Robert Downey Jr. gives a stellar performance as Charlie, a dying AIDS victim and Max's best friend, and Ming-Na Wen strikes just the right chord between "girl next door" cute and raw "bad girl down the block" animal sexuality as Max's wife, Snipes was simply two-dimensional. His Max Carlyle just sat there.
Kyle MacLachlan reminds us once again why his series, Twin Peaks, was eventually canceled with his stoic portrayal as Vernon, Downey's homophobic brother.
The worst performance, came from an aging Kinski who, with this role, states once and for all and beyond a shadow of a doubt that her days as a supermodel/sex-kitten are long behind her.
It's hard to believe that Snipes' character is obsessed with a passionless stick-figure like Kinski when he has the effervescent Wen at home.
The writing is laughable, and director Mike Figgis seems to be doing a dual homage to Frederico Fellini and Woody Allen with his confusing style, which includes strange flashbacks, characters talking to the camera, and at one point (in true Fellini fashion), Snipes character plagued by a ghost in a jester's cap who is supposed to represent his conscience and repressed guilt. Uh yeah.
The ending of this film had me wondering why I had paid good American money to see this turkey. How appropriate I saw it the day before Thanksgiving.