Fatale
Ratings: 2/5
Duration: 102 Minutes
Language: English
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Director: Deon Taylor
Writer: David Loughery
Producer: Roxanne Avent, Robert F. Smith, Deon Taylor
Music: Geoff Zanelli
Cinematography: Dante Spinotti
Editing: Eric L. Beason
Released On: 18 December 2020
Star Cast: Hilary Swank, Michael Ealy, Mike Colter, Geoffrey Owens
Plot: There is this man named Derrick Tyle (Michael Ealy) who is not just extremely handsome but also a successful millionaire. He is a sports agent from Los Angeles and a former college basketball star. His business success is instantly signalled by his sharply tailored suits, beautiful office and lavish Hollywood Hills home featuring the inevitable infinity pool. His best friend Rafe (Mike Colter) is his business partner and is pressuring him to sell the company they have built to the behemoth William Morris Endeavor and reap millions.
Derrick is not convinced with the idea of his best pal. He is keen on keeping control of what they have worked so hard to achieve and continue their focus on providing the most lucrative deals for their line-up of African American clients.
Derrick is married to the beautiful but distant Traci (Damaris Lewis). She is a real-estate agent who is suspiciously out late showing expensive properties from Hancock Park to Marina Del Rey. She and Derrick live in the Hollywood Hills off Mulholland Drive. Traci quite transparently hates her husband, doesn’t care about their union, and is most likely stepping out on him in her spare time.
Then comes the weekend when the best friends reach Las Vegas to attend a friend’s bachelor party. Everything about Derrick’s life is about to change from that point. Rafe sells Derrick the idea – ‘what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’. He then yanks off the man’s wedding ring and sets him loose in a sweaty nightclub saying, “You are single now, Derrick! Have fun!”
There enters hot and sexy Valerie (Hilary Swank). Derrick and Valerie meet at the bar and he accidentally spills the drink on her slinky dress. The two hit the cord from the get-go.
After a passionate one-night stand, his first clue that things may be amiss comes when he tries to leave Valerie’s hotel room in the morning and finds that she has locked his cell phone in the safe. Derrick is taken aback by this act of Valerie but doesn’t read too much between the lines.
On his return to Los Angeles, Derrick treats Traci to a guilt-induced romantic evening. After returning home, he is brutally attacked late one night by a masked home invader. The couple decides on inviting the LAPD into their home to help solve the crime.
When the police arrive to investigate the matter, the detective in charge is none other than Valerie. She is shocked to see Derrick in Los Angeles — wasn’t he “Darren” from Seattle? And, unlike Dareen, Derrick is a married man. But she’s bent on staying professional.
Valerie never boils Derrick’s bunny, but she does find flimsy reasons to show up at his high-rise office and at his minimalist mansion. Theoretically, it is all part of the investigation that she is leading, but she is also trying to make him squirm.
Gradually, it is revealed that Valerie has problems of her own, mainly being involved in a bitter custody fight over her daughter with her ex-husband (Danny Pino), an up-and-coming politician. It also becomes very apparent that she is not willing to let what happened in Vegas stay in Vegas.
Will Valerie ruin Derrick’s marriage? Who robbed Derrick and his wife? The movie slowly and gradually reveals answers to all these questions.
Review: Obsession is the marrow of erotic thrillers, from the sublime (Fatal Attraction) to the ridiculous (Obsessed), to the auteur-crafted (Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor) to the Netflix-knockoff (Fatal Affair).
Despite the ample availability of movies which are built on the concept of ‘guilty pleasures’ and delight in sex-mad, unspooling wacky-crazy, unhinged freak fests, the telling of their stories can contain all the freshness of data entry.
Taylor, who reteams with his ‘The Intruder’ star Ealy and screenwriter David Loughrey takes some swings that must be admired, because the basic ideas are quite good, though the execution is very bad. Lately, David Loughery, the screenwriter, has been specializing in these sorts of twisted thrillers with films like Lakeview Terrace and Obsessed. He has done a decent job in keeping the melodramatic plot revelations coming fast and furious from there.
But director Deon Taylor’s film feels much, much older than that with its cheap thrills and archaic approach to women characters. The retrograde attitude might at least be vaguely tolerable if ‘Fatale’ leaned harder into its inherent cheesiness. And yet, this modern-day take on the ‘Fatal Attraction’ premise never fulfils its promise as a lurid, guilty pleasure. It lacks the verbal punch of a pulpy film noir.
Despite its slick aesthetics, with gorgeous stars in luxurious clothes driving flashy cars and enjoying multimillion-dollar views from the beachfront to the hilltop, “Fatale” is weirdly dull. The film certainly looks terrific, thanks to Dante Spinotti's glossy cinematography and the high-end production design and costuming.
Clearly, Swank or her character’s demented arc, or even the uncomfortable Ealy and his character’s insane idiocy, failed to give the movie the sharpness that it needs to keep the viewers hooked. There is no defect for such a genre in the industry and with better plots and twists.
Given the reality one can easily slide away and skip watching this movie.
