Seduced: Pretty When You Cry (2002) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Major spoilers

I like ol' Sam Elliott, but I gotta give this one a thumb down, pardner.

It's the usual story of the sexy, scheming woman who enlists a mild-mannered schmuck in her plot to axe her husband. The entire murder story is told in flashbacks from a police interrogation.

At first, the schmuck thinks he's being interrogated for the murder of the husband. From that point on, there is a complete turn in our perceptions about every two minutes. He's innocent, no, he confesses. wait a minute. Is the husband really dead at all? Or maybe he was dead before the schmuck bopped him. If so, who killed him? What about the scheming wife? Oh, she's dead now. Wait a minute, no she isn't. The entire purpose of the script is to come up with surprising twists, and they start from the very beginning with our assumptions about who is dead and when they died. There are so many (unlikely) twists, that even the people who think they committed murder really didn't. Or maybe they did.

The last 15 minutes are like one of those Russian nested toys. You think you have gotten to the real toy when you open it up and there is yet another toy inside. So it goes with all the final revelations in this film. Not only were the twists unnecessarily complicated, but there are no characters to like, and the film gives away the each surprise too soon, then stays with each scene long after it has served the purpose of carrying the plot baggage to the next scene.

The worst, most contrived twists are saved for the last minute. The schmuck thought he was the murderer, the detective proved to him that he wasn't, then arrested him anyway. Why? Because the arresting detective was the real murderer, and the real love of the scheming woman's life. You would have no way of knowing that until the last second, but that's the way they chose to end it.

Bah, humbug.

"Well, it's an erotic thriller", you're thinking, "maybe the sex saved it?"

Nope. In fact, the sex ruined it further. You see, there was lots of sex, and it was plenty kinky, and there was plenty of dirty talk and violence and simulated rape and such. It was originally rated NC-17. But it got that rating based on thematic material, not visual. Almost all of the sex scenes were shot from the shoulders up or from angles which cover the female nudity. Therefore, a very significant portion of the running time is devoted to kinky sex scenes with no visible female body parts - the who'e crazy "arms over the breasts" thing.

In other words, it's not for people who like either erotic movies or thrillers, because it isn't satisfactory as either.