Deathtrap
Christopher Reeve was known to have an unfortunate tendency in his non Superman movie acting roles to not only be continuously upstaged by one or more of his costars, but also to never quite shake off the stigma that audiences would forever identify him with being The Man Of Steel in the definitive sense, resulting in a certain detachment while watching him play other characters even as his aforementioned costars would sometimes steal the spotlight from him in the process. Nowhere was this any more evident than in this 1982 release with not only a prestige director (Sidney Lumet) at the helm, but also with an overall smaller cast and a mostly one setting environment where Reeve would be taking on one of his more edgier parts: a conniving, gay sociopath who has wormed his way into a married couple’s life with the intention of taking more than just their money from them. His two key costars here playing the married couple are Michael Caine and Dyan Cannon, both of whom get their share of somewhat fun moments whereas Reeve just exerts great effort to exude creepiness with mixed results. The story itself was taken from a long running Broadway play which itself was an inverted spoof of the revered murder mystery genre, featuring a playwright (Caine) who specializes in writing murder mysteries now in a downward spiral both mentally and financially after his latest opus has just taken an enormous crap in front of a disinterested crowd on opening night followed by all of the theater critics following suit by uniformly shitting all over his newest work as well. Drunkenly coming home to a wife (Cannon) who has a habit of suddenly screaming either in fear or surprise to such mundane events as him merely walking through the door, Caine also discovers to his surprise a manuscript for a new play that has been mailed to him by a college student (Reeve) whom he tutored at a writing seminar some time ago. Upon reading it, Caine is shocked to discover that it’s a masterpiece, an out of the ballpark grand slam home run by a rookie writer on his first attempt. Salivating at the money that could be made from long running royalties on the work, Caine endeavors to invite Reeve to his home to discuss helping him produce it and possibly collaborating with him all while strongly hinting to Cannon that his real intention for the invite would be to murder Reeve, stash his body and then steal the manuscript for himself, putting his own name on it in order to get one last shot at Broadway glory, a intimation that his wife Cannon doesn’t really take very seriously much to her regret. The idea of a veteran murder mystery writer suddenly deciding to experience the real thing for himself is not a bad one until we as viewers realize that the majority of this movie is literally an endless wall of dialogue exchanges amongst the various characters including an extremely annoying psychic next door neighbor (Irene Worth) who comes in and out of the movie chattering endlessly in an eccentric manner as if she really thinks that she’s stealing the movie or something before exiting stage left. Things don’t get much better when Reeve arrives, although the safe explanation is to say that he’s not exactly what he seems and that what’s going on here is not exactly how it appears which is evident by the commendable double twist that occurs halfway through the movie and the ongoing battle of wits that continues to the final scene. Obviously most famous plays when adapted for the screen are given additional locations and thus are allowed to breathe for a better cinematic experience, but here Lumet chooses to keep things very stagy and claustrophobic, limiting most events to the downstairs of Caine’s house and barely moving the cameras beyond that point, creating more of a stifling effect in the process that is only punctuated by the endless talking going on even as Caine does get a couple of pissed off rants that are good for some chuckles and Cannon (with her underrated cuteness) getting some good put upon moments where she gets to exercise her pouting techniques. But in some ways, this is SUPPOSED to be Reeve’s show with him displaying a rare look at his darker side in this juicy part, but the best that he can do is just get off a few smirks and grimaces and not at all be the master manipulator playing off all sides in his favor and hardly ever exuding any kind of sinister evil as was intended which again, is not necessarily his fault since his place in people’s minds as one of cinema’s greatest good guys was far too deeply ingrained, coming across more as being completely out of place here as opposed to any lack of acting skill. But sadly, the overlong (116 minutes) story must play itself out as Caine and Reeve go into extra innings with an extended game of cat and mouse as each one goes to great lengths to anticipate the other one’s next move even as some of the supposedly more “clever” bits come across as being more contrived (including bullets being removed from one gun intended for use and put into another without the other guy knowing) than anything else which combined with a copout ending adds up to showing why scaled down, stagebound murder mysteries (admittedly more popular in the 1950s than they are today) have since been reduced to the level of audience participation dominated dinner theatre since just sitting there and watching a very small group of characters in a singular setting solving murders without us getting to put in our own two cents was always going to have a very limited appeal…
4/10