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TUNNEL VISION
Rating: ½
Australia. 1994.
Director/Screenplay – Clive Fleury, Producer – Phillip Avalon, Photography – Paul Murphy, Music – Ric Formosa & David Hirschfelder, Production Design – Phil Warner. Production Company – Australian Film Corporation/Beyond Films/Pro Films.
Cast:
Robert Reynolds (Frank Yanovitch), Patsy Kensit (Kelly Wheatstone), Rebecca Rigg (Helena Martinelli), Shane Briant (Detective-Inspector Kevin Bosey), Gary Day (Steve Docherty), Justin Monjo (Craig Breslin), Craig Ashley (Karl Knowles), David Woodley (David De Salvo)
Plot: Brisbane police detective Frank Yanovitch and his partner Kelly Wheatstone investigate a serial killer who is modeling the dispatch of their victims on the work of a particular artist. At the same time Frank is also cautioned by his superior for his maverick tendencies. Frank has just married graphic designer Helena Martinelli and becomes increasingly suspicious that she might be having an affair with a co-worker. He begins to obsess over her affair. But then Helena’s co-worker is found murdered and Frank is forced to go on the run from his own colleagues as the prime suspect.
This Australian-made psycho-thriller was one of a whole host of films that came out copying Basic Instinct (1992). It’s rather terrible – not the worst that would emerge from this subgenre, but one that is fairly tattily made on most counts. The heated sexuality emerges rather tamely. Rather than concentrating on sexual entanglings, the film misguidedly spends its time on the policier aspects of the story. The entanglings between hero Robert Reynolds and wife Rebecca Riggs, where the director has clearly intended to give the impression of aggression and rough sex, come out as more laughable than erotic. The film’s vision of a BDSM club is ludicrously tame – clearly made by people who have never visited one, nor even really done any research on the scene. Again there are the usual psycho-thriller associations made between BDSM and psychopathology.
The thriller plot is routine. What is perhaps even more interesting than the psycho-thriller plot is the subplot about the hero’s clearly unbalanced obsessions about his wife and her infidelity. Alas the film suffers an inexpressive hero in Robert Reynolds and fails to really explore this side of things at all. Opposite Reynolds, Patsy Kensit tries hard, but she is really a terrible actress and lacks much in the way of depth, certainly any of the toughness that a police detective should have – during the interrogation scenes she just comes out as ridiculously wimpy. What eventually does the film in is its absurdly contrived final twist. Certainly the person led up to is, as expected, the one that does it, but the only whodunnit aspect comes in their motivation where the film throws in a left field turn that is just bizarrely laughable.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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