Cold Heart (2001)

Redundant and unnecessary.

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

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

its good for a few laughs... if you're light-tempered enough to enjoy bad things. and even if you don't laugh, its still moderately entertaining. and OH! don't you just love a twist ending? this one actually surprised me, i wasn't expecting it. but maybe i was too distracted by the anime eyes of our resident psycho (Holloway).Kinski is rather subdued... maybe sedated through the picture. and Fahey is very grim and serious the whole way through.But for a "psycho seduces unhappy wife of his shrink and she rejects him and all hell breaks loose" kind of movie... its not all that bad. just don't expect anything Oscar worthy.

I came home last night from band practice with my tail dragging; it wears me out. I was surprised to find my wife up at 11:30. She said she'd had trouble sleeping. So I made some popcorn and we flipped through the channels. This movie was just starting. In its way, it's a real gem. The characters are all so ridiculous that they're like comic book characters; but I mean that in a good way. The movie wisely stays focused tightly on just a handful of characters: Kinski, a professional woman working for a company that does I'm not quite sure just what (brokerage, I think?); her analyst husband; the young pyscho who works for her firm AND is a patient of the analyst; and Kinski's assistant, an impossibly sexy and overly-made-up blonde.The psycho is almost too goofy at the start, with his leering smile and his oh-so-perfect hair. He accompanies Kinski on a business trip, and finds it laughably easy to get her to have a drink, then to slam shots, and finally to go to bed with him. (One is surprised that her clothes don't literally fly off her, she's so obviously eager to be seduced.) The next fifteen minutes of the movie shift to softcore porn with plenty of groping and breasts and buttocks (none of which are Kinski's, I'm guessing).Then the movie proper begins. Blah blah, back home, blah blah, she's made a mistake, blah blah, he won't take no for an answer. And there's something not...quite...right about the husband.Anyway, the whole things gets resolved in an anti-climax at a rustic cabin the analyst has just presented to Kinski, purportedly to atone for his failings as a husband that had led her to the arms of another. The ending turns into comedy, almost slapstick, with some funny lines that are made even funnier because the movie gave no hint that it, like the young psycho, is completely schizophrenic.All in all, this was a pretty cheesy movie, and if you were taking it seriously from the beginning, you would probably find yourself annoyed with it. We both watched it because it was late, there was nothing better to do, and we just wanted to be entertained. And we were.

I like Hudson Leick as much as the next guy (and probably more than most of the next guys), but even for her, this movie is just not worth watching. It's just plain terrible from start to finish. Sure, Hudson looks great if that's your interest -- not hard for her to look good in any case -- but even fast-forwarding and just watching her scenes, this one is just a real crapper. Even if you really like Hudson, avoid it.

Nastassja Kinski seems to be making a career out of playing the bored wife who has an affair with a younger man...who then tries to kill her. Seriously, "Cold Heart" follows the plotline of her other film "Say Nothing" very closely. And then there is "Blind Terror," which is the same basic plot, with very minor differences.Actually, in some ways, "Cold Heart" is the best of the three. There is a clever plot twist towards the end which I was not expecting. It is not fully fleshed out and explained, but it's an interesting idea. Josh Holloway is on the verge of playing a good psychotic...but he reverts to the same maniacal smile too many times to bring much depth to the role. Jeff Fahey has a thankless part, and seems bored playing it. Nastassja...well, I think she too is bored, and why wouldn't she, since she played the same role in three different movies, all released within a year of each other. She looks good, but for Nastassja fans, there is nothing particularly intriguing that she brings to this part. There is no one scene that stands out.It is what it is...a made for video thriller.