Sort of like a quick swipe at Rigaletto if it was being done as a half hour Twilight Zone. In this one, the hunchback jester, I mean business executive called Rick, is played by Bill Pullman. He works for some horny little dick young enough to be his son called Duke. Duke has already masturbated while having e-sex with Rick's daughter on line. Rick's daughter and her girl friend are supposed to be teen-agers but are long limed, tall, slim hipped pouty lipped 20 somethings in schoolgirlesq outfits. I think one girl was in a pleated plaid skirt even. The other girl wore glasses and had kinda okay hair but you could tell that underneath she was really hot. The set up of a thousand soft core videos. It lasts as long as Duke does, sort of a jerky little w*nk video in itself stuck into the film.
Sandra Oh comes for a job interview and Rick treats her like sh*t. Later when Rick and Duke go out to a club they get her fired as a waitress. She puts a curse on Rick. An old chum, perhaps, visits Rick and offers his services in knocking down what's standing in his way to the top- Duke. This is the 'cutthroat' of the opera. At first he turns him down but when the discovers his daughter has been getting it on with Duke he approves of the hit.
It going to take place at the office Christmas party. The daughter shags Duke and then slips out in his jacket (which choice is cornier- this or overhearing the plot and sacrificing herself for love of Duke?) and she's the one who is hit. The End.
This could really have easily been done as a Twilight Zone or maybe a US Steel Hour/Climax but its stretched because it needed certain accessory scenes, the soft core girls talking dirty, masturbation, soft core copulation etc. Certain foreign territories, as the salesmen call them, demand certain things. Usually the more prudish countries want the prurient scenes. As long as it doesn't go over a certain line.
Nothing here goes over the line. The plot is simplified from the opera libretto but it is also highly stylized. The cutthroat is sinister and obscure, omnipotent and yet quite crude. This magnificent professional murder at the end is no more than a cheap perfunctory sidewalk snatching with hit men not knowing the difference between a short guy and a tall lanky woman.
Like an opera RICK seems to exist merely to present some transitory state of being. The narrative is a vertical pole with scenes pegged into it with their contents hanging there like cloaks. In its metamorphosis from Verdi Opera to film, RICK seems stuck in TV land, its proudest boast being that it got made.
Sandra Oh comes for a job interview and Rick treats her like sh*t. Later when Rick and Duke go out to a club they get her fired as a waitress. She puts a curse on Rick. An old chum, perhaps, visits Rick and offers his services in knocking down what's standing in his way to the top- Duke. This is the 'cutthroat' of the opera. At first he turns him down but when the discovers his daughter has been getting it on with Duke he approves of the hit.
It going to take place at the office Christmas party. The daughter shags Duke and then slips out in his jacket (which choice is cornier- this or overhearing the plot and sacrificing herself for love of Duke?) and she's the one who is hit. The End.
This could really have easily been done as a Twilight Zone or maybe a US Steel Hour/Climax but its stretched because it needed certain accessory scenes, the soft core girls talking dirty, masturbation, soft core copulation etc. Certain foreign territories, as the salesmen call them, demand certain things. Usually the more prudish countries want the prurient scenes. As long as it doesn't go over a certain line.
Nothing here goes over the line. The plot is simplified from the opera libretto but it is also highly stylized. The cutthroat is sinister and obscure, omnipotent and yet quite crude. This magnificent professional murder at the end is no more than a cheap perfunctory sidewalk snatching with hit men not knowing the difference between a short guy and a tall lanky woman.
Like an opera RICK seems to exist merely to present some transitory state of being. The narrative is a vertical pole with scenes pegged into it with their contents hanging there like cloaks. In its metamorphosis from Verdi Opera to film, RICK seems stuck in TV land, its proudest boast being that it got made.