Original Sin *** (2001, Antonio Banderas, Angelina Jolie, Thomas Jane, Jack Thompson) – Classic Movie Review 3025

‘This is not a love story but a story about love.’

Antonio Banderas stars as a Cuban businessman who is completely happy when he takes Angelina Jolie as his mail-order-bride wife. But, soon, it turns out that she is a femme fatale and that she has disappeared with his money. He is left distraught and angry, and, when he sets out to find her, discovers that she’s been accused of a brutal murder.

Writer-director Michael Cristofer’s full-blooded 2001 period melodrama / romantic thriller, based on the novel Waltz into Darkness by Cornell (Rear Window) Woolrich, previously filmed in 1969 by François Truffaut as Mississippi Mermaid, goes pretty well, though there are longueurs and hesitancies, thanks in part to an overlong running time of just under two hours.

As it is the equivalent of a Forties Hollywood melodrama movie, it must be said that they would have done it in 90 minutes in those days, both sharper and tauter. And, as it’s 2001, for a popular audience, you can’t help wondering if a modern setting in the USA wouldn’t have been a better idea. But you can’t fault the period production and lusty atmosphere that go with it.

Banderas and Jolie have the stuff to make this work, which is quite a compliment, given some of the awkward lines they have to deliver and the tricky scenes they have to play. Thomas Jane looks good but is kind of miscast and doesn’t really cut the mustard as the dodgy detective on the case. And, with Jack Thompson’s role just a cypher, there are virtually no other roles in the story to speak of. Fairly torrid sex scenes between Banderas and Jolie jolly things up and it’s a hot and steamy movie.

The conclusion is: ‘No matter what the price, you cannot walk away from love.’

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Classic Movie Review 3025