This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Lightning Strikes Twice
Plot Overview
Retired shrink Dr. Helen Hudson (Sigourney
Weaver) lives alone in a multi-level “helluvan apartment”
overlooking the SF
Bay. She hasn't left it since her nervous breakdown thirteen
months ago; she now suffers from agoraphobia. In the den are
shelves of books galore, a tripod-mounted telescope, cards arranged
for solitaire, and a chessboard set up ready to go. She plays
online chess with an adversarial opponent who lacks the social skills
to come out and play in the real world, and she haunts chat-rooms
for mindless prattle with other homebound broads. She has
three computers, a police scanner, a telephone with multiple
extensions, and a television set in every room. She gets the
newspaper delivered right to her door. This is her world. She misses
men; her gay “assistant” Andy (John Rothman) doesn't count.
Her unsolicited advice to the SFPD concerning
tie-ins among three recent killings (“Nobody in this department
has ever worked a serial case before”) brings to her door female
homicide inspector M.J. Monahan (Holly Hunter) and her sidekick
Reuben Goetz (Dermot Mulroney.) MJ with her dominant personality,
found she was unable to maintain a relationship with another
cop, though with her cutie looks she could have takers. She falls
back to a vibrator. Good looking Reuben is slow with women and too
shy & bashful to try anything with MJ beyond their developing
friendship. He wears loud ties to compensate. Women call him
up. Routinely. MJ thinks of him as a “boy.”
Fitting the serial killer profile Dr. Hudson
had developed on her past college lecture circuit is SF resident Peter Foley (William
McNamara.) He's a “White male, aged 20 to 35, quiet, unassuming,
… nice.” Holds down a job, makes a decent neighbor, and
earns his victims' trust. He's married to an affectionate babe, but
his interests lie elsewhere (“what turns on a serial killer
is the suffering and death of another human being.”) His techie
job made him computer-savvy. He's skilled enough to break into a home.
Helen's home. With whom he wants to have some “fun,” the
kind of fun that had earlier left her deranged.
Ideology
Dr. Hudson tells a class, “The FBI estimates that there could be as many as 35 serial killers cruising for victims even as I speak.” They just don't know. It's as (Eccl. 8:11) “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” They are not easily caught. Targeting strangers and planning meticulously makes it hard. It takes a task force, which takes time. They'll have a good run at least and maybe age out and lose interest. (“Did anyone ever catch the Zodiac, sir, or did he die of old age?”)
(Eccl.
8:12-13) “Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his
days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them
that fear God, which fear before him. But it shall not be well with the
wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow; because
he feareth not before God.” Say, these killers get practice
on a hundred victims. They've got their modus operandi down pat. It's
still not going to end well with them. Killer Daryll Lee Cullum (Harry
Connick, Jr.) says, “I'm just like
Jesus. I've got disciples, too.” They learn from him. He tells
his partners, “a disciple must be strong … if he is to
succeed where others fail. Peter strayed from the path and the Lord
smote him good.” They learn from others' mistakes.
MJ on the other hand is a God-fearing officer of the law. Policy is to shoot for center mass if she's in a deadly confrontation, but she shoots to wound. She is commended because, “You haven't taken a human life. Your karma is still good.” Her fellow officer Nicoletti “Nico” (Will Patton) excuses himself on account of, “something I did in another life.” MJ rejoins, “Probably something you did in this one.” Better keep those books up to date. MJ is characterized as, “one of those people who think all things happen for a reason. We're all God's chillon.”
Production Values
“” (1995) was directed by Jon Amiel. The script was written by Ann Bidderman and David Madsen. It stars Sigourney Weaver, Holly Hunter and Dermot Mulroney. Weaver and Hunter were sympathetic characters who played well their parts. Hunter wore her hair in a bushy ponytail that accentuated the height difference when she was looking up at her junior partner played by a tall Mulroney and next to her boss played by an even taller J.E. Freeman, both of whom she got her way with. It's an interesting effect and a feminist's wet dream, if you'll pardon the term.
MPA rated it R for violence and language [one “g.d.”] The plot is barely plausible and the police procedures a joke, but the tense drama rates it a second viewing. It's full of homages, left and right. The soundtrack is eerie and the cinematography evocative. Some trick camera shots showed a distorted world from the pill-popping lady's perspective. The plot itself used whitey music, i.e. “Murder by the Numbers” by The Police band, “I Think I Love You” by the Partridge Family—which the black cop said was “driving me crazy,”—and some kind of opera playing for the housebound lady. For that matter, serial killers tend to be race-specific targeting their own. In the lecturer's show–and-tell, she showcased white males of a certain age being, some of them, a danger to the women in her class predominantly white. I don't think this was racist per se as with three races in the lecture hall, and two sexes, the variations would jam up the time had they all been gone over. We can figure it out. Runtime is 2 hrs.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
This movie came out in 1995 right about the time feminists were having second thoughts about women finding their fulfillment in the workplace. Here we see he-women working with she-men. Toxic masculinity is on an uptick of violence, while the domestic sphere is left out in the cold. It's somewhat along the lines of what George F. Gilder writes about:
Without a durable relationship with a woman, a man's sexual life is a series of brief and temporary exchanges, impelled by a desire to affirm his most rudimentary masculinity. But with love, sex becomes refined by selectivity, and other dimensions of personality are engaged and developed. The man himself is refined, and his sexuality becomes not a mere impulse but a meaningful commitment in society, possibly to be fulfilled in the birth of specific children legally and recognizably his. (35)
The dangerous society depicted here enhances the suspense in a thriller where the face of the killer is shown, but not everything about him is known. This movie would have been more memorable had it not been competing with other thrillers that came out at the same time.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Well done action flick. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quotations were taken from the Authorized Version. Pub. 1611. Rev. 1769. Software.
Gilder, George F. Sexual Suicide. New York: Quadrangle, 1973. Print.
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