Deathtrap (1982)

...so how do I write a review without one? I'll try. I saw this when it first came out in the theater, and it was so much fun, with so many plot twists and double-crosses--some you can see coming and some not.I've recently seen it on Turner Classic Movies a couple of times, and it is still entertaining as far as the performances, even if you know what is coming. The set-up is this: Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine), a playwright, has just written a flop. He returns to his country home from Broadway after phoning his wife, Myra (Dyan Cannon), about the bad news. He has been giving seminars on writing for aspiring playwrights, and when he gets home he opens a package sent to him by one of those students. It is a play entitled "Deathtrap", and the student sends a note asking if Sidney thinks it is any good. Sidney's analysis is that it is excellent, a sure fire hit, and then he starts to do and say little things that make the audience - and Myra - think that maybe Sidney is contemplating stealing the play, and doing away with the student who sent it in order to score a success for himself after a long stretch of flops. He calls the student and asks him to come to his house and in such a way that nobody will know where he has gone. Past that point I'll let you watch and see what happens.Now the student turns out to be played by Christopher Reeve, and given his devastating injury 13 years later that eventually took his life, seeing him walking around so young so healthy and never showing even a glimpse of his Superman persona - the only role he was really known for at the time - is worth the price of admission. Dyan Cannon is excellent as the nervous and hovering wife Myra. Michael Caine, who has given so many good performances over the years, seemed to work an awful lot during the 1980's, sometimes in good films sometimes in bad ones. This is one of the good films and he gives a very good performance. No doubt all of these good performances had something to do with director Sidney Lumet.Some people say the first half is great, the second half not so great, that it bogs down. I beg to differ. The pace between the two halves is just very different, but the whole thing keeps you on your toes. Make sure you notice everything that is going on.If I had to say anything negative it might be that the German psychic, Helga ten Dorp, is overdone and campy just a little bit. Plus it is a stretch that she makes a habit of shining flashlights through her neighbors' windows at night during rainstorms, and then wandering through their houses uninvited. If she is so psychic, can't she perceive she has overstayed her welcome from the minute she said hello? The original trailers had a Rubik's Cube with the faces of the cast members on different sides of the cube. I'd say that's an excellent visual description. Do give it a try. It's one of my favorite thrillers.

There are two big problems with the movie. The easier problem to remedy is the pacing. There's just too much time spent on material that adds nothing to the plot or the ambiance. 90 minutes might have been a good length, but 120 minutes is way too long. The larger problem is that the final twist is so stupid it destroys the rest of the experience. A satisfactory twist in a movie consists of three parts: the twist is unexpected the twist makes sense/plausibility within the movie universe (ie no magic deus ex machina, no lucky coincidences) the twist is organic to the storyline. Once it happens, we review the previous material in our minds and see that, yes, it makes even more sense within the light of the twist. Something that doesn't follow these rules is not a twist, it's a gimmick, the sort of BS that leaves you swearing that you'll never again waste your time watching a movie by that particular director and screenwriter.This movie delivers a completely satisfactory twist in the first act, leaving one to expect that the second act will be resolved just as satisfactorily. But no such luck --- the second act ends with a gimmick. Unexpected yes, but barely plausible, and utterly inorganic to the story. The play (from what I read on Wikipedia) seems to have done a substantially better job of making the ending feel natural. So we have the not too unusual story of movie makers (the director? the producers? the financiers?) too stupid to understand what was actually valuable in the property they chose to adapt and insisting on "improving" it. Oh well, what can you do? The stupid will always be with us.

Enjoyable if forced murder mystery whodunit kind of thing played to the max and beyond pretty much as a two-hander by Caine and Reeve. "Deathtrap" seems to try to send up every Agatha Christie - type concoction there's ever been, throwing in more twists than a Chubby Checker revival show, but seems to forget that Peter Schaffer's "Sleuth" got there before it a decade earlier.Caine's in on this of course, he now playing the Olivier role as the ageing dominating schemer of the two, with Reeve as the initially submissive but later resistant junior partner in the former's nefarious, ingenious if somewhat far-fetched plan to bump off ailing wife Dyan Cannon (who couldn't look healthier, as a matter of fact) and get his hands on her massive fortune.The initial twist is well staged and does come as a big surprise but subsequent events fail to repeat the trick and the insertion of the ludicrous Scandanavian medium Helga Ten Dorp (there must be an in-joke anagram in her name I've not yet deciphered) to sweep up the pieces with her thick-as-Nordic-snow accent takes it just too far over the top.For all that, it's directed at pace with no let up on the camp factor from the normally straight-arrow Sydney Lumet and features a slightly awkward full-on kiss between the leads with a complete lack of conviction on either side. It's one of perhaps too many unintentional comical scenes in this play within a play within...you get the idea, but you sense that no-one minds too much in any case, so irreverent is the whole concept and execution here.

Ira Levin's Deathtrap is one of those mystery films in the tradition of Sleuth that would be very easy to spoil given any real examination of the plot of the film. Therefore I will be brief in saying it concerns a play, one man who is a famous mystery playwright, another man who is a promising writer, the playwright's wife who is much younger and sexier than the role should have been, and one German psychic along for the ride. Director Sidney Lumet, no stranger to film, is quite good for the most part in creating the tension the film needs to motor on. The dialog is quick, fresh, and witty. Michael Caine excels in roles like these. Christopher Reeve is serviceable and actually grows on you the more you see him act. Irene Worth stands out as the funny psychic. How about Dyan Cannon? Love how Lumet packaged her posterior in those real tight-fitting pants and had her wear possibly the snuggest tops around, but she is terribly miscast in this role - a role which should have been given to an older actress and one certainly less seductive. But why quibble with an obvious attempt to bribe its male viewers when nothing will change it now? Deathtrap is funny, sophisticated, witty, and classy. The mystery has some glaring flaws which do detract somewhat, and I was not wholly satisfied with the ending, but watching Caine and Reeve under Lumet's direction with Levin's elevated verbiage was enough to ensnare my interest and keep it captive the entire length of the film.