An alcoholic beat cop gets promoted to homicide detective after apprehending a dangerous suspect. The detective likes to drink, sleep around with anything that moves and kick ass! The catch? The detective also has boobs. That’s right…she’s a girl! What follows is a game of murder by numbers in which you want to murder the person who convinced you to go see this movie in the first place and the numbers are the amount of money you wasted on this shlock. Ashley Judd looking like a 12-year old boy…ensues.
I wasn’t expecting much from this film and that’s exactly what I got: not much. I got a few laughs though, as well as plenty of eye-candy from the gorgeous Ashley Judd and the fat-faced Andy Garcia, but other than that, you might as well have called this film “Generic Thriller with Obvious Plot Turns and a Lame Ending” instead of the even more generic, TWISTED. I don’t usually guess stuff before a movie begins but I actually turned to my ladyfriend before this screening and named exactly who I thought the “baddie” would be. Needless to say, I was dead-on, but that didn’t prevent me from frivolously enjoying most of this flick on a “who gives a shit” level. In fact, despite its routine nature, the picture was quick enough not to bother me, interesting enough to stay tuned and shot in San Francisco, which always looks sweet on film. It didn’t take long for me to realize that it wasn’t an airtight suspense though with shoddy dialogue (“Every time I kiss a man, he ends up dead”) and plot holes the size of my ass. My favorite chasm came early on in the murder investigation when the commissioner questioned Judd’s character about “shady” people who might want to do harm to her and she couldn’t seem to come up with a name, despite the fact that her creepy ex-boyfriend was hounding her in a number of scenes before that one. Are we supposed to take this brilliant detective seriously after that? Not long after that, every single clue in the world points to Judd’s character committing the crimes herself and once more, the commissioner decides that keeping her ON the case would be the best course of action. What kind of half-assed police department are you running, chief?
But the best of the bunch, and the subplot that kept me laughing throughout this film (it can actually be turned into a drinking game…see below) was that no matter who they were discussing in the film, Judd’s character had slept with them. Her ex-partner? She nailed him! The lawyer prosecuting the bad guy? She did him! The floaters in the river? She fucked ’em all! My God…is there anyone in San Francisco in front of whom this chick hasn’t spread eagle!?! Oh, actually…there is. Her nice guy partner treats her right, cares about her feelings and wants to give her a kiss, but she turns HIM down. C’mon!! Women. Get your priorities straight, girlfriend! Garcia acts with his second chin in this film, while Jackson acts with his glasses halfway down his nose, while the rest of the cast does what they need to do and nothing more (they all act like red herrings to boot). The same can be said of the directing and the film’s score, both of which were standard, at best. It actually felt like a straight-to-video that would star folks like Angie Everhart, Louis Gossett Jr. and Eric Roberts, but it somehow, someway made its way into Oscar-nominated director Philip Kaufman’s hands, who spun from it, a harmless bad movie, loaded with obviousness and a hilarious lead in Judd’s pissed-at-the-world, alcoholic, sex-addicted Michael Douglas wannabe character. Rent it on video one day and take a shot of alcohol every time the film brings up another character with whom Judd has traded bodily fluids. Trust me, ten minutes into this thing…you’ll be drunk and having a blast! Serious thrill seekers…stay away. Oh and if you liked MURDER BY NUMBERS…you’ll love TWISTED!