Review of Swimming with Sharks (1994) by Nick O — 25 Jul 2013

The poster for this movie makes it look like a comedy, but I'm not convinced that it is. It's more of a dark drama that starts as a straightforward revenge fantasy before eventually throwing some morally confusing twists in your face and running away. It's more troubling and introspective than it is funny. The movie is a satire, but one without laughs.

The story alternates between flashbacks, in which we see a young assistant (Frank Whaley) begin working for an abusive, short-tempered movie producer (Kevin Spacey), and the present, in which the assistant has tied up the producer and is torturing him with an apparent intent to eventually kill him. The basic dynamic is similar to the one in the much later film Horrible Bosses, also with Spacey, but this one is much less obviously humorous than that one.

Kevin Spacey is typically brilliant and intense as the producer, who at first is horrifically cruel, but later is revealed to have a tragic backstory and who is able to make a cogent, if not persuasive, defense of himself. This might be the first of Spacey's long series of portrayals of power-mad dickheads, and it's the sort of role he was born to play - consider also Horrible Bosses, Casino Jack, Superman Returns, and the Netflix TV show House of Cards. Frank Whaley, probably best known today as "Do-they-speak-English-in-what? Brett" from Pulp Fiction, is very good as the assistant, but the character ends up being so unappealing that maybe this is what kept him from getting more lead roles in the future.

The movie is a black-hearted satire that ultimately has no redeeming characters and no happy ending. It's quite cynical, and it's clearly making fun of the Hollywood system, but it doesn't have any actual jokes or comedic moments. I guess what humor there is in the movie comes purely from its dark irony and reversals of fortune. I wouldn't say this is a bad movie - the performances are really good and it's decently well-made - but it's not really a fun one, and not quite how it's advertised to be. It didn't make me laugh, but I didn't dislike it either.