Review: Fatale

There's occasionally some confusion in the movie world about the difference between "good" and "entertaining". "Good" is the kind of film that's considered for awards; "entertaining" is Fatale, a not-particularly-erotic thriller that's staggered out of the 90s like the last twenty years of television never happened. It's a very specific kind of experience, but if you're on its wavelength there's a lot of fun to be had - if not always of the kind the film-makers intended.

There's a lot of plot here and not all of it comes from Fatal Attraction, but all you really need to know is that former sports star (just go with it) turned sports agent Derrick Tyler (Michael Ealy) is raking in the cash but for some reason his trophy wife (Damaris Lewis) has resting bitch face 24/7. So when he goes to Vegas for some business-related partying, he ends up sleeping with a Random White Woman (Hillary Swank), who rapidly turns out to be kind of nutty... but it's nothing he can't handle. 

Turns out he can also handle a home invader who interrupts his makeup sex with his wife; going by the way he swings a club, maybe golf was the sport he was a star in? But when the cops arrive at his fancy mansion it turns out Random White Woman is in fact LAPD detective Val Quinlan, who is both a hero cop for unexplained reasons and a disgraced cop for tragic reasons. Her showing up feels like a coincidence that should mean something; it does not. Well, it does mean she's back in his life, especially as the home invasion could have been an attempted murder. Who can he trust?

Nobody. The answer is nobody, because this is one of those films where pretty much everybody is a scumbag with something to hide. You'd think Derrick would be used to this, what with being a sports agent, but Ealy spends 95% of the film with a WTF expression that, to be fair, is perfectly justified considering what's going on around him.

This has two things going for it, and neither of them is sex despite a handful of sex scenes, which is a handful more than pretty much everything else out of Hollywood in the last few years. The first thing is that the story just keeps on coming: the plot may be implausible and require people to be fairly stupid, but through sheer volume alone the twists - and Ealy's stunned expression - keep the entertainment value up.

The other is Swank's performance. She really goes for it in a fairly complicated role, having to walk at least two fine lines at once to make Val even remotely plausible. She's clearly having fun chewing on a meaty role without ever going so over the top she trashes the film; the rest of the film does a pretty good job of that without her help.

- Anthony Morris