The Underneath (1995)

Perfect cast and a good story

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

A recovering gambling addict (Peter Gallagher) attempts to reconcile with his family and friends but finds trouble and temptation when caught between feelings for his ex-wife and her dangerous hoodlum boyfriend.I have seen the original movie ("Criss Cross") and rather enjoyed it. Possibly, this film is even better. I find that hard to say, because you really can't beat the classic noir, but Peter Gallagher is a powerful lead. The Soderbergh script is a little odd in the dialogue department, but at last he doesn't go full David Mamet. (Not to knock Mamet, it's just not very natural.) There are intriguing twists and turns here, and no one is purely good or evil. That, really, is what makes for the best noir -- the cast of seedy characters who can never be trusted, even if we (the audience) want to love them.

A compulsive gambler returns to the town he fled years before on account of bad debts. He quickly hooks back up with an old flame who is now married to a local hood. Before long he finds himself involved in organising a big money heist.I get the impression from other reviews that this Texas neo-noir from director Steven Soderbergh doesn't have too good of a reputation. This is something that surprises me somewhat and is a sentiment I cannot get behind. For me, this was a well-directed and well-acted crime film with an interesting structure and a bit of style to burn. Its story is told in three different time-lines that dovetail for the final section. The flash-backs and flash-forwards are effective in creating a tension that ensures we want to find out how everything fits together. Not only this it always looks interesting too, with unusual framing and stylized lighting often used. This emphasis on the visual works well for the neo-noir sub-genre and here is no different. Peter Gallagher is very good in the lead role, in a character that isn't terribly sympathetic, while Alison Elliott was equally good as the woman he reacquaints himself with. Pleasingly, the film ends with a finale that neatly wraps things up in a satisfying and unexpected way.

I read somewhere where this film was supposed to be a remake of the 1949 film noir, "Criss Cross." I found the latter to be disappointing but it was still better than this film. This movie is a "neo-noir" since it's modern-day and it's in color, two things that purists would make it be disqualified for film noir status. The biggest negative to it, however, wasn't the cinematography (that was fine) but the muddled storyline. Hey, some of '40s Dashiell Hammett stories were similar but I didn't care for some of those either. The filmmakers here did not help the situation by placing flashbacks into the story what seemed like every three minutes. No wonder it was the keep up with this story. It was ridiculous! What happens is that by the 45-minute mark, their is so much confusion nobody cares anymore. I know I didn't.

This movie is an updated version of the Burt Lancaster/Yvonne DeCarlo movie "Criss Cross". When viewed with that in mind I think the movie's production values really show off Soderberg's experiments with style in a much better light. The hospital sequence is more understandable, and the character's actions are better explained when viewed with the knowledge of the 1949 morality of the original. The casting was really well done, and Soderberg achieved the seediness of life on the edge of legality, and the pitfalls of blind love. The story is perfect film noir, and seeing updated stories like this makes you long for other directors to go back to that well and update other gems such as John Garfield's "Force of Evil", and director Robert Wise's "Born to Kill".