Swimfan **½ (2002, Jesse Bradford, Erika Christensen, Shiri Appleby) – Classic Movie Review 2129

You can’t help being attracted to director John Poulson’s 2002 crazy stalker thriller as a glossy though fatally flawed teen swimmer version of Fatal Attraction or Play Misty for Me.

It stars Jesse Bradford as Ben Cronin, a New Jersey high school senior swim champ who makes the mistake of cheating on his long time girlfriend Amy Miller (Shiri Appleby) for a one-night stand with an unhinged new college vixen called Madison Bell (Erika Christensen).

Ben, a former juvenile delinquent and drug taker, is now reformed and is the star swimmer of his high school team, so scouts from Stanford University are coming in a week’s time to check out his swimming prowess. But now Madison just won’t leave Ben alone.

It starts in the swim, but the actors start to struggle from drowning in the deep end of Charles Bohl and Phillip Schneider’s shallow screenplay long before the movie ends.

It’s its lack of originality, bittiness of delivery and the last-reel nowhere to go that tend to really sink it. Nice and capable ex-child-star Bradford deserves better and will need better to survive as an adult star.

Nevertheless, Swimfan is entirely watchable. Bradford gives an appealing, tormented performance, there’s good acting from a strong support cast and the movie looks incredibly striking thanks to Giles Nuttgens’s classy neo noir-style cinematography.

Dan Hedaya as creepy Coach Simkins, Kate Burton as Ben’s mother, Clayne Crawford as Josh, Jason Ritter as Randy, Nick Sandow as Detective John Zabel, James DeBello as Christopher Dante and Kia Goodwin as Rene also star.

In this same year, 2002, Bradford graduated from Columbia University with a degree in film. With the help of four TV series so far, his acting career is carrying on nicely.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2129

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