1994 was a great, great year for movies. That year, audiences and movie history were blessed with the classic THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, Tarantino's milestone of cinema, PULP FICTION, Stone's own landmark Tarantino adaptation, NATURAL BORN KILLERS, the much loved FORREST GUMP, and many other good movies. Then there's stuff like DISCLOSURE, no... that's unfair. Very little Hollywood fluff gets as bad as DISCLOSURE. There were other bad movies released in 1994, but they were the safe, normal bad movies we've come to expect.
DISCLOSURE dares you to enter the terrifying cut-throat business world in which bad dialogue runs rampant, characters appear in cartoonish clarity or linger blurred in the background, and all dramatic points are rendered in stark black and white.
If I hadn't seen a little cheapie shot-on-video horror movie called HELLSPAWN, I'd call DISCLOSURE the worst movie of its year. The packaging looked intriguing at first: we have the usually respectable Michael Douglas, the "talented" Demi Moore, and the once respectable Barry Levinson. Then there's that whole roles-reversed sexual-harassment thing. It sounded like a neat idea at first, but they brought it off as some cheesy thriller complete with bad suspense and a hero who is constantly accidentally implicating himself. It's like FATAL ATTRACTION plus crap.
In short, it's about a guy (Douglas) being sexually harassed at the workplace by his superior, and ex-lover (Moore). Nobody believes him because guys generally like girls coming onto them even when they're married (if the film was good it might have dispelled this sexist stereotype). The matter gets legal and things complicate.
Now, we've seen hundreds of these bad thrillers, but DISCLOSURE isn't satisfied with being a regular old bad thriller. Instead, Demi Moore, Donald Sutherland, Michael Douglas, and probably the entire supporting cast are entangled in some kind of shady deal involving technology and the manufacture of microchips overseas. This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't result in supposedly important techno-babble about the technologies for which they obviously failed to consult a technical advisor. That isn't the worst of it either. The real stinker of this flick is the virtual reality scene. Michael Douglas puts on the virtual reality goggles to uncover footage exposing corporate black-ops, only to find a cheesy 2D icon of Demi Moore deleting his files with what looks like a laser-beam (Ha! Ha!). And then comes the computer-geek with angel wings and a halo, trying to warn Douglas while still in virtual reality. The scene inspires one to say out loud "What the F***?"
Meanwhile in reality, Douglas has a wife who doesn't trust him, people in his office shifting loyalties, accusations- the whole deal. None of it is interesting, and you can see the twists coming a mile around the corner. Levinson renders it all very dull, taking no steps to save the picture from its script. Levinson even fails to put the beautiful Seattle locales to the proper use. I think this one really unmasked him as a bad director (after all, how good was RAIN MAN, really?). DISCLOSURE is a bad 80s concept trying to squeeze into the newly forged 90s in all the wrong ways.
The final result is truly inexcusable. DISCLOSURE should only be watched for laughs, and even then, only out of severe boredom. For a good suspense/thriller involving a domineering woman and sex, see PLAY MISTY FOR ME. For a good 90s movie, see any of the films I named in the first paragraph. Just stay far away from DISCLOSURE!
DISCLOSURE dares you to enter the terrifying cut-throat business world in which bad dialogue runs rampant, characters appear in cartoonish clarity or linger blurred in the background, and all dramatic points are rendered in stark black and white.
If I hadn't seen a little cheapie shot-on-video horror movie called HELLSPAWN, I'd call DISCLOSURE the worst movie of its year. The packaging looked intriguing at first: we have the usually respectable Michael Douglas, the "talented" Demi Moore, and the once respectable Barry Levinson. Then there's that whole roles-reversed sexual-harassment thing. It sounded like a neat idea at first, but they brought it off as some cheesy thriller complete with bad suspense and a hero who is constantly accidentally implicating himself. It's like FATAL ATTRACTION plus crap.
In short, it's about a guy (Douglas) being sexually harassed at the workplace by his superior, and ex-lover (Moore). Nobody believes him because guys generally like girls coming onto them even when they're married (if the film was good it might have dispelled this sexist stereotype). The matter gets legal and things complicate.
Now, we've seen hundreds of these bad thrillers, but DISCLOSURE isn't satisfied with being a regular old bad thriller. Instead, Demi Moore, Donald Sutherland, Michael Douglas, and probably the entire supporting cast are entangled in some kind of shady deal involving technology and the manufacture of microchips overseas. This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't result in supposedly important techno-babble about the technologies for which they obviously failed to consult a technical advisor. That isn't the worst of it either. The real stinker of this flick is the virtual reality scene. Michael Douglas puts on the virtual reality goggles to uncover footage exposing corporate black-ops, only to find a cheesy 2D icon of Demi Moore deleting his files with what looks like a laser-beam (Ha! Ha!). And then comes the computer-geek with angel wings and a halo, trying to warn Douglas while still in virtual reality. The scene inspires one to say out loud "What the F***?"
Meanwhile in reality, Douglas has a wife who doesn't trust him, people in his office shifting loyalties, accusations- the whole deal. None of it is interesting, and you can see the twists coming a mile around the corner. Levinson renders it all very dull, taking no steps to save the picture from its script. Levinson even fails to put the beautiful Seattle locales to the proper use. I think this one really unmasked him as a bad director (after all, how good was RAIN MAN, really?). DISCLOSURE is a bad 80s concept trying to squeeze into the newly forged 90s in all the wrong ways.
The final result is truly inexcusable. DISCLOSURE should only be watched for laughs, and even then, only out of severe boredom. For a good suspense/thriller involving a domineering woman and sex, see PLAY MISTY FOR ME. For a good 90s movie, see any of the films I named in the first paragraph. Just stay far away from DISCLOSURE!