Review of Color of Night (1994) by Bradley F — 25 Jun 2014

Color of Night is sort of like watching a film directed and written by Tommy Wiseau. There are a lot of awkward and unintentionally funny scenes in this film. It's honestly hard to describe anything without grinning from ear to ear. The acting, writing and directing is so horrendously bad and yet good. Let's look at this insane case called "Color of Night".

Bill Capa (Bruce Willis) is a psychiatrist who has suffered the traumatic event of one of his patients jumping out of his office window. This leads him to go visit his other therapist friend in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, this friend ends up getting murdered. I would describe the rest of the plot, but I just can't. Why? Two reasons: Firstly we would be here all day. What doesn't happen in this movie? Car chases, lovemaking, dual identities, general insanity and some more lovemaking. Secondly, I don't think even the movie itself knows what it wants to do and what it wants to be. There are times when the whole Murder Mystery thing is completely forgotten because the film got caught up with something else. I would say the film shows signs of multiple personality Disorder.

The acting and Dialogue in Color of Night is the main highlight. Anything that is said by Detective Martinez usually gets a laugh. Lesley Ann Warren is wonderfully over the top and of course Jane March as a young man is hilariously bad. However, Bruce Willis offers nothing to this movie at all. He really doesn't want to have campy fun with his role and because of that resistance he fails the hardest here. But I will say this: he knows how to have sex on camera. Seriously, his sex scenes with Jane March (as a woman of course) are just a treat to watch. The only time I believe these two have any connection as a couple is when they're butt naked doing it like Rabbits. I might sound like a Perv saying that but it's really true.

I really wish this movie had more laughs and more focus though. There are a long stretches of boring and unneeded things. This movie doesn't know just how incompetent it is Therefore, it tries it's hand at character development mostly with the crew of psychotics Willis is in charge of. With the exception of Lesley Ann Warren, I find none of these insane people that interesting. Yeah, Brad Dourif is kind of funny but his character is still dry as hell. Maybe if the screenwriters had more fun the audience would.

Here is my "Final Analysis" (wink) on Color of Night. It has a mixture of both Bipolar Disorder and Paranoid Schizophrenia. It's an insane and unintentionally hilarious piece of S*it. Let me put it this way, as a Mystery/Drama it fails. As a Comedy, it rules!