The Underneath *** (1995, Peter Gallagher, Elisabeth Shue, Alison Elliott) – Classic Movie Review 1578

Peter Gallagher stars as Michael Chambers, a gambler and former convict who comes back to Austin, Texas, to celebrate the wedding of his mother (Anjanette Comer). While in town he tries to reignite the old flame with his ex-wife Rachel (Alison Elliott), whom he left clearing up the mess he’d left fled from with his gambling indiscretions. Assimilating himself in town again, Michael gets a job working for his mother’s new husband as an armoured car driver.

But Rachel has a current mobster boyfriend, Tommy Dundee (William Fichtner), who catches the duo in the act of passion, angering the hoodlum big time. So Michael ends up reverting to the life of crime and robbery, ashe and Rachel conspire with a gang to steal a payroll being transported by his armoured car company and have his own truck robbed en route.

Co-writer/director Steven Soderbergh’s 1995 movie is an ambitious, moodily atmospheric but sometimes ragged and shaky lowlife crime thriller, based on a reworking of the classic 1949 film noir Criss Cross and the source novel by Don Tracy.

Despite the top director and good cast, there are some scripting and acting hesitancies here. But, balancing that, there is also a great deal of imaginative work by Soderbergh, both as writer and director, and good work by the interesting actors on the always intriguing story. However, the film was a surprise flop, taking only just over $500,000 at the US box office, though perhaps with a bigger star name and a better title (why didn’t they keep the catchy original Criss Cross?) it would have succeeded at the box office.

Joe Don Baker, Paul Dooley, Adam Trese, Shelley Duvall, Joe Chrest and Richard Linklater (in a cameo as the Ember doorman) also appear.

Original 1949 screenplay writer Daniel Fuchs is credited as co-writing the 1995 screenplay with Soderbergh who, unable to use his own name on the screenplay for legal reasons, used the pseudonym Sam Lowry, the hero of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985), played by Jonathan Pryce. He used the name again in Criminal (2004).

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1578

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