Review: "The Last Seduction" (1994)

Something was in the movie water in October 1994 when not one, not two, but three very different but nonetheless classic movies were released -- Pulp Fiction, Clerks, and The Last Seduction.

The Last Seduction falls into my favorite new category of NYC movies -- movies about New Yorkers who are far from home, in an environment that is totally alien to them.

The plot revolves a woman who works as a telemarketing manger who is married to a doctor. They are deeply in debt to the mob and decide to make some easy money by engaging in a one time drug deal (the doctor-husband sells some goons stolen prescription drugs and winds up with a big suitcase full of cash). His wife then steals the money and heads upstate, leaving her husband to the mafia's fate, while she plans to get to Chicago and start a new life. Worried that her husband and the mob might find her if she gets to Chicago too soon, she stops in a small town in upstate New York, gets a job, and seduces a local man (hence the title) into murdering her husband (the mob has not yet killed him but instead broken several of his fingers).

Her plan is coldly brilliant and flawlessly executed but she is desperate to get out of this small town and go back to NYC so she can live large on her stolen loot. Throughout the movie there are jokes about living in "cowtown", how this city woman cannot tolerate life in this tiny place, and she even tells her "cowboy" at once point to go find a nice "cowgirl" and make "cowbabies." Lovely lady.

The great actress Linda Fiorentino played Bridget, the scheming femme fatale, while Peter Berg plays the mark of her seduction, and Bill Pullman is her miserable husband. The people in this movie are uniformly horrible, the story starts out dark and gets darker, and it ends badly. But the movie is also very funny and, yes, sometimes sexy. This is the kind of movie that doesnt get made anymore and, had it not been so well made and acted, would have just been another dumb thriller.

So this is a great one to watch although probably not with someone you're in a relationship with. It makes you want to become celibate.