The Fourth Man
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Movie Reviews of The Fourth Man
Movie Review: Movie for a Post-Christian World
Summary: 5 Stars
The director, Paul Verhoeven, creates a profoundly Christian movie and presents it to a bored post-Christian world disguised as a cheap sex comedy with special effects. He must be laughing bitterly now, to see us avert our eyes from this tale of sin and redemption. Hard to imagine, isn't it? Show me a man more more sunk in degradation than our eminent Dutch writer and drunk and lecher and thief, masterfully played by the actor Jeroen Krabbe. Who would die to redeem this failure of a human being? Yet someone does die an ugly vicious death. And the world continues on its path, untouched, as Verhoeven no doubt expected.Movie Review: Verhoeven's best film is finally on DVD!
Summary: 5 Stars
A great, sexy, macabre, stylish horror-comedy. Far superior to "Basic Instinct". It's Verhoeven's best by far. His direction on this film is as good as Polanski's. Full of weonderful macabre touches. The DVD is superlative--nearly flawless print, anamorphic, optional yellow subtitles. The image transfer does full justice to Jan DeBont's astonishing cinemtography. And Verhoeven's commentary is really energetic and detail-packed about the production and its strong symbolism.Highly recommended!
Movie Review: Genius! Absolute Genius!
Summary: 5 Stars
The more films I see by Verhoeven the quicker he becomes one of my all time favorite filmmakers ever. Just watched this several days ago and it is a real cinematic treat full of brilliant performances, dizzying camera work and comical, radical, shocking and thought provoking dialogue and imagery. This is a real master at work. Verhoeven is one of the best directors ever and this is one of his finest achievements.Movie Review: Worth the price of admission
Summary: 4 Stars
The director's commentary on the DVD is very informative. In fact, though I'd had the video for many years there were aspects that - even after repeated viewings of the film - I'd never realized before. The commentary is also interesting because it seems - like the original FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN films - this film is to be taken not literally, but with a high dosage of humor. Knowing that makes the film even more enjoyable; almost a guilty pleasure, with its moments of high camp and yet serious tone and definite sophistication. It's intriguing the title character is based upon the actual writer of the novel - Gerard Reve - and his own stories, and that actually puts me off. I wonder about someone who places himself as the lead character in a story and is even protrayed by an actor in the film. The performances are uniformly good, with two leads and one supporting lead. All of the actors are - or became - well known in European films. Personally I'm not a fan of Paul Verhoeven's BASIC INSTINCT - in fact, I don't think I've ever been able to sit through all of it. I find this film to be particularly good at working on various levels, however it could be typed as misogynistic in its attitude towards its lone female lead, and if you're put off by male-male kissing (the lead male character lusts after a younger man, the boyfriend of the lead female character) or full-frontal nudity (both males and the female) then this is not the film for you. However, the overall film is very funny; very stylish; and too high class to be termed campy.Movie Review: nightmare mix of alcoholic insanity and erotic horror
Summary: 4 Stars
This film has great atmosphere, with an alcoholic writer who may be going insane. He is full of violent fantasies, his life spinning out of control, and he goes about his career in a fog. Called to give a reading in a small village, he sees a boorish young man that he would like to seduce. The village culture spot seems to be run by a hairdresser business woman with an interest in literature. She invites the writer to stay at her place, and by a strange connection, she invites the young man over that he wanted to seduce. In his paranoid manner, the writer begins to think that something strange is happening, that the woman is somehow other than human. He notices, for example, that she lacks sensation in parts of her back, like witches. Even more ominous, he begins to see that she is associated with the violent deaths of no less than 3 husbands. It remains uncertain if he is victim of an alcoholic psychosis, apparently a source for his imaginative powers, the basis of his extraordinary talent. Finally, as he is seducing the young man in a graveyard, he realizes they are in the mausoleum that contains the ashes of all 3 husbands. This drives him over the edge in spite of what happens next, and the village people banish him to a hospital for the insane.
While I tried to hide the many off-beat surprises in the film, the plot matters less than the nightmarish atmosphere of the film. This is highly successful and an interesting precursor to the director's later work. Recommended warmly. Very solid entertainment.