Extremities

A taut, even thoughtful thriller that offers 90 minutes of almost unrelieved tension. The plot is full of unexpected turns, the acting is terrific and the direction holds attention throughout. No "Cobra," this. [1 Oct 1986]

Fawcett is admirable; evoking the pathos of beauty that turns from a blessing into a target, her own beauty is deepening into courage and talent. [1 Sept 1986, p.86]

Originally an off-Broadway play, EXTREMITIES projects the powerful rancor of the play, but the film also retains some deadening theatricality that doesn't work on screen.

Anger? Outrage? Are these new feelings for audiences dealing with the fact of rape--aborted or not? You might hope not, but if they are, the film generates them, as well as the shamefully satisfying taste of bone-cracking revenge. But they still don’t add up to reason enough to make a movie, or to make it in 1986.

THE smashing, crashing, thrashing battle between Farrah Fawcett and James Russo that takes up about half of Extremities leaves the contestants in a state of exhaustion -and the movie along with them.

There aren't any flesh-and-blood characters here, only superimposed attitudes: it's almost like reading a rape-crisis textbook, with every lesson italicized.

Fawcett isn`t half bad--she works hard and doesn`t commit any egregious technical faults--but she doesn`t have the resources to give her slimly written character a sufficiently commanding inner life, and it`s difficult to get beyond her sunny, fashion-model good looks. It`s another sad case of the clown who wanted to play Hamlet.