The Razor's Edge (1984)

America has not entered WWI yet. Larry Darrell (Bill Murray) with his girlfriend Isabel Bradley (Catherine Hicks), his best friend Gray Maturin (James Keach) and Sophie MacDonald (Theresa Russell) live a comfortable upper class life. Larry and Gray go to Europe to drive an ambulance. After the war, Larry goes in search for himself. In Paris, he and Isabel end up not getting married as he pushes on as a coal miner and eventually cooking at a Tibetan monastery. Isabel ends up married to Gray who goes to work for his father. The Great Depression hits the family brokerage hard and Gray's father commits suicide. Sophie suffers after her husband and child are killed in a car crash. Larry runs into Isabel and Gray with their two daughters now broke in Paris. They also find Sophie who became a drug addicted prostitute.Bill Murray does a good but not a great job. He is always great at the zen jester character. He just can't reach the darker depths necessary during and right after the war. It also occurs to me that this is the story of two people. Isabel is the other person and the movie needs to zero in on that. Theresa Russell would have been a great Isabel although she's a perfectly fine Sophie in the movie. Sophie could have done by somebody more fragile. It's a good attempt by Murray but not all successful.

This is a horrible take on the book. How could anyone cast Bill Murray in this role. If you have not read the book it would not matter perhaps. If you have read the book then do not waste your time. I really like Bill Murray but NOT in this role. The role of Maughnam is missing and was important to the story. Sophie did not play such a strong role in the book. The movie abbreviated the book and in exchange you wind up with a limp, wrong story. What enlightenment? Line up a bunch of books. I'm wondering if they really read the book or simply did a remake of the original movie.The only enjoyable part of the movie would be the Indian music.

It is difficult for me to understand how the many fine actors in this movie (apparently) didn't know how awful they were being, as they were reading their lines. Is this the fault of the director? I'd love to know if anyone involved was *not* embarrassed after viewing the result. There are movies with "false" moments, though they can get-away with them on balance, and then there are movies with no false moments at all, and will weigh on you for a long time (the antithesis of this stinker may perhaps be Seven Years in Tibet). I have never before seen a supposedly serious movie with ALL false moments--not a single scene anywhere in this film rang true-to-life. Horribly acted by all (except perhaps James Keach who appeared to take his responsibility seriously) and just-plain-bad from beginning to end, I'm truly sorry I wasted 128 minutes on this. If not for the costumes, locations, and cinematography (and the fact that IMDb wouldn't let me anyway) I'd have give this zero stars. I think I will now look in IMDb to see what other films John Byrum has made--can we hold him responsible for this mess?

I can't even get to dealing with the supposedly wonderful themes of the movie, because... who cares? It's so oddly edited, as a string of disconnected vignettes. Almost every scene for the bulk of the movie, we see time pass: Establishing theme with some vaguely establishing shot. Something overly interesting happens. The results of that lead to something rather chatty and boring. That segues into something "meaningful." You can tell, because the theme music picks up!!!! Repeat.Oh, but the cinematography! Is mostly boring, really. Maybe 1-2 minutes of nice photography, but mostly boring as hell. It's mostly filmed like a comedy, with everyone fully- lit, centered when it's their turn to say something or react to someone else.And that's before I get to the part where Bill Murray spends most of the film looking amused with himself. Only in the last 45 minutes is he even approaching being in the same movie as everyone else, and he still is so inconsistent and a product of 1984 that I cannot believe he has felt anything or believes there is life and death stuff going on.I gave the whole thing a chance, I really did. Watched it all straight through, and didn't even mock it until the credits rolled. It's just not that good.