Overview
The cool, calm, and collected (not to mention beautiful) Laure Ash is a master at deceiving and redirection. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos plays Laure, who is a secretive, sexy, devious mastermind in a jewel heist. Things turn out differently for her crew when she bolts with the jewels…and so the chase is on. Laure uses her deceiving personality and charm to escape to a private life that is far away from her previous life. When her newfound life brings her back to the same city where she committed her giant jewel heist and where she pulled the wool over her former partners' eyes, things get a bit hairy for Laure. Laure realizes she is in danger as soon as she steps foot in the city she fled, and is in the thieves' thoughts, especially once they realize she is back...and all because one man snapped a photo.

Review
Laure Ash is a woman that just can't get enough. She is someone that is devious and destructive, and can be intuitive and sexy at the same time. Laure and her crew of jewel thieves develop a masterful plan to steal diamonds in one of the most interesting ways: at the famous Cannes Film Festival, they use smoke and mirrors and expert crew placement to take an entire dress made of gold and diamonds off of a model…without her knowing it. After stealing the diamonds and running off with them, Laure is on the run and she knows she needs to get away fast. Laure uses her instincts and skills to make her getaway and knows she needs to leave France and never come back, for it would be the end of her. When a unique twist of fate presents itself to Laure, she jumps on it immediately, using it as an escape from France, from her former life, and from blood thirsty killers.

Laure leaves France, and happens to marry a man who will later become the U.S. Ambassador to France in another odd twist of fate. Her husband's job brings her back to the one place where she could not go. Her one saving grace is that her former crew does not know she is married to the Ambassador, and does not know she is in their own backyard. In fact, in the 7 years that she has been gone, Laure has somehow evaded photographers, keeping them at bay and from taking her picture so that her killers cannot track her down. In yet another odd twist of fate, Nicholas Bardo (played by Antonio Banderas) is employed by his Sleazy Agent (that was the name of his agent on the advance DVD screener I have, but he is uncredited in the movie because of his very limited role) whose voice is that of Rebecca's own husband, John Stamos, to snap that elusive photo of the Ambassador's wife. Nicholas is successful and drastically changes Laure's life without realizing it, who decides to suck him into her web of lies and deceit. And don't worry, just when you think it gets bad, it gets much, much worse.

Acting
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos tried to use this movie as a rebound from the horrible movie that was Rollerball. Rebecca definitely outdoes herself in this one…but for the worse. I didn't think she could have done worse, but she does. This is mostly because of the piss poor direction, but I'll get to that in a minute. Being the movie is based in France, you would have thought that subtitles could have easily been left out of this already impossible to follow movie. But no. Rebecca spews quick lines in French off and on throughout the movie, even fakes a half-decent French accent, but there is a lot left to be desired. The best part of the movie is the nude scenes and the make-out session between Rebecca Romijn and world renown model Rie Rasmussen. That is the highlight of this film, sadly.

Antonio Banderas jumped from a fairly decent movie in Original Sin with the sexy Angelina Jolie, to this piece of garbage that wasn't worth the paper the script was written on. Banderas seems to have a way on the big screen with gorgeous women, and definitely has experience in that realm by starring with in movies with Salma Hayek (Desperado), Angelina Jolie (Original Sin), Catherine Zeta-Jones (The Mask of Zorro), Lucy Liu (Play It To the Bone, and his latest silver screen flick in Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. Banderas seems to thrive on the big screen when he is in movies with gorgeous women, but that trend drastically ended with Femme Fatale. Although the scenes with Banderas and Romijn-Stamos are somewhat captivating, they aren't enough to save this movie from the $5.00 DVD bin at Wal-Mart. He delivers his lines with a bit of hesitation and makes you feel bad for him. He doesn't seem like he is right for the part, and at this point, I don't think anyone could have done better with this script.

Directing
I feel bad for Brian De Palma. He should not have written this movie, much less directed it. It takes away somewhat from his accomplishments, from his claims to fame. Mission Impossible, Scarface, Carrie, Snake Eyes were all great movies, with great scripts and fantastic direction. Those are movies to be proud of. Femme Fatale is one to forget.

At first, the movie starts out as an action/adventure flick, then quickly turning to a drama that needs time to develop. Before it can begin to develop, it turns into an edge of your seat thriller and then twists for the millionth time leaving you pissed off that you bothered watching it. The next time I get the feeling I should stop watching a movie, I definitely will. I don't get the feeling that often, but when I do in the future, I will either leave the theatre or shut off the DVD player.

My main gripe about this movie isn't necessarily the horrible acting, it is the script itself, which was written by De Palma himself, without the help of anyone else. Too bad, he could have placed the blame on a co-writer if he did! The movie starts out looking pretty decent, especially with the lesbian scene coming within the first 15 minutes. That grabbed my attention. Unfortunately, it couldn't keep it after the next 15 minutes. Like I said before, I don't think the movie would have been better if there were other actors in it, because the biggest issue is the confusing plot. It is a story that jumps from one confusing sequence to the next, leaving the viewer no time to recover and figure out what just happened. The main plotline the movie follows is crap, and turns even crappier when it hits the climax, which turns out to be the same story, but what would have happened had one simple choice was made differently and how that would have occurred. If you've seen Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow, you would have felt like the general plot was old and overused (which it is). If you haven't seen Sliding Doors, I'll go ahead right now and tell you that it is a fantastic movie and that you should definitely check it out.

Final Thoughts
The expected release date for this film is March 25, 2003, but hopefully you will heed my advice when I say that Femme Fatale is easily the worst movie I have ever seen and stay the hell away from it. I feel cheated out of the over 2 hours of my life that I lost by investing time and energy into this film. I would have given this 0 Planets, but the lesbian scene gives it half a Planet. That is all that saved this one from the worst rating we could possibly give out.

Hyndsy Rating: 1 out of 5 Planets


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