Second Skin (2000)

I love this movie so much

What a beautiful movie!

best movie i've ever seen.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This movie is not only bad, it's sad. It doesn't really deserve a review, but its silly pretentiousness calls out for some kind of response .The dialogue is so bad it's laughable, it has cardboard characters with cardboard acting, and, to remind you that you're looking at full-bore noir, it's loaded with clichés (a slinky femme fatale, thunder and lightning, a lot of rain, dark clubs, moody music, hookers, obvious villains with faces shaded in menacing darkness throughout; the list goes on). It has characters named Tommy Gunn (a gruesomely tattooed, gum-thwacking bad guy; see Richard Widmark, 1947, Kiss of Death), Sam (as in Spade, a sort of good guy), Gutman (as in Sydney Greenstreet's character in The Maltete Falcon), and Crystal Ball.Scriptwriter John Lau and director Darrell Roodt, in other words, seem to be having fun with 1940s-style noir films. Unfortunately, we don't get to share in the fun. It's an unintentionally hilarious flick because it plays it dead-straight from start to finish. (Sample dialogue: 'Cherchez la femme'. 'What's that?' 'It's French'. One of the most famous phrases in the French language, and the femme fatale has never heard of it. Jeez.)As parody, this might have been at least tolerable; when played straight it's screaming for ridicule. There's a twist at the end, and you don't see it coming, and how could you? The 'other' woman who gives it the twist appears in the film without any context, so the viewer is left befuddled by the ending more than shocked, which is what noir audiences in the 1940s used to be when they saw similar kinds of stuff.Noir directors in the '40s-early '50s (e.g. Samuel Fuller, Henry Hathaway, Jules Dassin) made some excellent (and very cheap) films, and they did them with style, good pacing, and believable dialogue. And they didn't have the luxury of sexual situations and famous four-letter words that saturate this pile of tripe, which apparently cost something like $3.5 million (not a lot these days, but still...) to make. The leftish Dassin, for one, is shouting from somewhere in Europe, where he's been cloistered since the witch-hunts of the 1950s. You could feed a lot of hungry people with $3.5 million, I can hear him saying.This film is laughable, and doesn't intend to be. Ultimately, that's why it's so sad.

I caught this movie on late-night cable a few years ago, and watched it because I like Angus McFayden. I got wrapped up in the story, and it has stuck with me ever since. McFayden does such a good job of playing a suspicious, very guarded man who lets down his defenses when he falls for a beautiful woman. You can see in his eyes how he feels, without him ever having to say a word (reminds me of Russell Crowe).The pain he feels as he tells her how much he cares about her is palpable. You can tell how hard it is for him to let himself be vulnerable. Natasha Henstridge does a surprisingly effective job as the girl. She's not the world's best actress, but she makes us believe that McFayden's character would fall in love with her. The film was obviously shot on a shoe-string budget, but McFayden's acting helps bring the film up to a higher level. All in all, pretty good for late-night viewing.

Believe it or not, it has just been shown on our national TV as some late hour production. I can do nothing more than to agree with the above-mentioned reviewers. One swallow does not a spring make, and I mean the gorgeous Natasha in the leading female role. Even a B-movie needs a plot (word that the director hum ... what's his name again does NOT use). This movie is so full of clichés it can be run as an example in the actor classes. Something that could be passable is completely destroyed by plot hole after another and a cliché after cliché. It becomes so apparent that the main male character which has the charisma of donkey in a meadow will be killed in the end that you nearly wanna shout at the crew - "Hey, why are you taking us for idiots?" This movie is so bad it could be entertaining just for that reason. If you are in the mood for mindless entertaining just for the sake of it, it's your piece of cake. So go ahead and watch it. 1/10 from me.

"Second Skin" bets everything on a hot babe, a scenic local, a handful of decent actors, a weak story and loses. Henstridge bumps her head, loses her memory, falls for some guy, gets her memory back and remember she's supposed to kill him. The story waxes somewhat more convoluted but lacks character depth and gives us little reason to care. Camera work is artsy for artsy's sake...nice try but no cigar. Fonda is unconvincing as the ultimate heavy, etc. Overall, this flick is a stylish loser not worth the time.