Someone To Watch Over Me

As with its title, which suggests a romantic comedy, this film suffers from a identity crisis. A romance/thriller it tells the story of a married cop (Tom Berenger) from the New York working class district of Queens who's given the job of protecting a beautiful, wealthy but lone'ly Manhattan socialite and murder witness (Mimi Rogers), Scott's directorial style owes a lot to '40s and 50s film noir as he explores the everlasting conflict between right and wrong as sex raises it destructive little head.

That's the good news. Unfortunately Scott overwhelms the script's solid core with '80s production values, including the inevitable big hair and shoulder pads and an insistently heavy-handed soundtrack that mixes opera and pop (the Gershwin song that provides the film's title makes various manifestations). Neither Berenger nor Rogers (who was the original Mrs Tom Cruise), are charismatic enough (Rogers doesn't have a lot more to do than look beautiful but I kept hearing Al Pacino in Berenger's lines) to match Scott's airless staging whilst the plot resolves itself weakly and wetly.

 

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