The greatest movie ever made..!

Blistering performances.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The Last Seduction is knee deep in the kind of seedy, neo-noir atmosphere you expect from these movies made in the 80s and 90s: House of Games, Basic Instinct, L.A. Confidential, Blood Simple, you know the type. The characters talk like they're either in the big city, or they're pretending to be. Their dialogue drips with suggestion and double meaning, not merely to turn the wheels of their devious schemes but also to key the audience into their motives. Linda Fiorentino is never less than what the plot needs her to be. Even as she is treated to her familiar dose of domestic abuse you can hear the churning and scheming in her mind - ladies and gentlemen, your femme fatale. And yet the performance is alluring all the same, despite dozens of previous stories telling us all how this one ends. Bridget Gregory, or Wendy Kroy, doesn't have the same blonde bombshell figure that you might expect after seeing Kathleen Turner in Body Heat, but in her mind that just keeps unwanted attention at bay. She doesn't need the pining of the small-town schmucks, she needs the guy in the middle, the straight-laced, overly-polite insurance worker who will go the extra mile for her even after having been rejected half a dozen times. Only after this initial test of his will (and his physical capabilities) does she give a little away. Peter Berg seems like a sap at first glance, the type of person to take an insult openly like a slap in the face and slip in a little self-depreciation for good measure. Here's a gorgeous woman offering one night stands upfront with a no commitment deal, but he mopes and mopes; he wants to talk a little in between all the sex, and eventually move up into the 'I love you' territory. Berg's Mike is so stilted and robotic next to Fiorentino throwing herself at him that it's almost as if he was an alien studying how to perform a human. But then the final twist is revealed, and suddenly everything makes sense. Mike has had his sense of masculinity shattered, and flees to his home town to re-piece it together. He can't afford to fall at the feet of whichever local hottie says hi to him at the bar; he's too guarded for that. Every minute of Mike's character is him over-correcting for his past mistakes, cautiously tip-toeing around the latest gal in town. But like any good noir, eventually he will fall in. And who wouldn't? Watch Fiorentino use her shoulder-length hair like a silky, black curtain, constantly swishing it back and forth as a power move. She doesn't just sit down, she sprawls and displays her entire body over furniture pieces, leaning way, way back, and men everywhere are transfixed. And her vocal delivery has just a tiny touch of huskiness to it - is it any wonder that Mike follows her around like a puppy?Bill Pullman as Clay, the wronged man, sticks out like the third wheel to this odd couple. He may put everything into that deadbeat grimace of his, but this is the same guy who played the president of the United States (and by extension, the planet Earth). Try as he might, he can't seem to fully summon all his loathing for his ex-wife, and so their phone calls are part menace, and full on seduction. She hasn't just hit him back, she's kicked him square in the groin and the wallet, and yet here he is trying to crawl back anyway. You might argue that there is no depth to this femme fatale, and you'd be right. She wants money and sex, and is willing to forgo the latter for the former. The men she stalks are the same. It's either one or the other, and even poor Mike has that thinly veiled desperation about him when he cracks. In return, he attempts to desperately re-assert his masculinity and falls right into her trap. Forget the convenience of the phone call trace now being swift; what matters is how he has played right into her hands, and revealed his meekness to be nothing but a temporary facade. Yet the great noirs crafted entire lives in mere glances and touches, made longing and memory a torturous existence. Dahl uses his entire runtime as foreplay, and although at the end I was thrilled, the twist didn't tell me anything I didn't already know about dames like Bridget. In Out of the Past, Robert Mitchum has to fend off advances from a past lover, who threatens to pull him back into a world he once abandoned. At the end of the movie, we don't agree with his choice, but we understand why he chooses it - he never really left in the first place. True, you don't expect complex character introspection from these types of trashy neo-noirs, but at least throw in something fresh. The genre hit a snag in this period, by thinking that urban ugliness was the only setting that these archetypes belonged to. So the photography is all shadows and murkiness, with some neon signage here and there. But Fiorentino could bring a man to his knees in open daylight.

This is one twisted chick in one twisted film. The thing that obviously attracts us to the female character is her beauty, and brains. No one could be this evil and still have men chasing her without "something." And the "something" is that she's sexy as can be a real knock-out. Linda Fiorentino is one of Hollywood's overlooked gems. Not only is she incredibly beautiful, but she is also a gifted actress. She'd made a few forgettable films prior to this, but this is the film that sent her star rising up-word. She delivered what had to be the hands down best performance of the year, in what had to be the best film of the year. Yet because it was first released to cable she was unable to be nominated for an Academy Award (Best Actress).There may be plot holes in "The Last Seduction," but I didn't notice them. And when Fiorentino's character (Bridget) burns a piece of evidence at the film's end, it certainly makes a case that the writers were not slack with the details. The other point that made me hesitate was the full screen treatment, and claims of a poor quality film transfer. I'm a widescreen viewer, but please do not let this full screen treatment discourage you. As for the quality of the film, it's a bit grainy, but I felt that actually gave the movie more of a gritty "film noir" look. After watching, I felt the tragedy as well. All that intelligence, calculation, expense of energy....for what? All for a tragic goal, although a tragic goal is not the same as a tragic ending. Poet W. S. Merwin nailed it with: "if we only knew, if we only knew what we needed, the stars would look to us to guide them." Overall rating: 9 out of 10.

In New York, the cunning and seductive telemarketing manager Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino) convinces her husband, Dr. Clay Gregory (Bill Pullman), to sell a load of cocaine for medical use to drug dealers. Clay raises US$ 100,000.00 with a loan shark and makes US$ 700,000.00 selling the drugs. However, she steals the money and flees to Beston, in Buffalo. She goes to a bar and has one night stand with the local Mike Swale (Peter Berg). On the next morning, she applies for a job position of manager of an insurance company using the name of Wendy Kroy and finds that Mike works in the same company. The naive Mike has just left his wife Trish that he briefly married in Buffalo and needy of love, he has a crush on Wendy. The manipulative woman sees in Mike the instrument to get rid of Clay and plots a sophisticated evil scheme using Mike. "The Last Seduction" is one of the best movies of the 90's with an amoral story of seduction and manipulation. This movie is, together with "Body Heat" (1981) and the unknown "Payback" (1995), one of the three best film neo-noirs. Linda Fiorentino is perfect in the role of the femme fatale that destroys the lives of three men – her husband, the private detective and the naive Mike. I saw this movie again yesterday and the story has not aged and is still a masterpiece of the genre. My vote is nine.Title (Brazil): "O Poder da Sedução" ("The Power of the Seduction")

At first, The Last Seduction felt like a sleazy exploitation pic, but it quickly surpassed my expectations. John Dahl's film is a surprisingly sophisticated neo-noir, which addresses all the prototypes of the classic film noir, but places the femme fatale at center stage, and re-examines the character prototype, through the filter or more modern views on values and genders. The Last Seduction plays with the viewers' expectations, and with the way they view the characters and their actions.And aside from all that, it's a very well-paced, well-constructed thriller which keeps the audience interested at all times, slickly executing dialogs full of subtext and tension. Linda Fiorentino (is this seriously the same girl from Dogma?!) is phenomenal in the lead role, and Peter Berg more than pulls his weight too, though his character seems simple and flat at first it grows and develops throughout the film. The only real fault I can find is Bill Pullman's ridiculous performance - he should really stick to comedies. But he pulls it together for the finale, a deliciously wicked and satisfying conclusion that ties all the loose ends. Definitely recommended.