Mortal Thoughts

It's a sleeper - the kind of fresh, dark, edgy, formula-shunning surprise that snaps you out of the usual Hollywood-induced torpor and nudges you back into believing in movies. [19 Apr 1991, p.44]

A gripping and pungent film noir, in which the hard facts and sharp emotions of a police thriller are softened by a subtle drift toward dreaminess and moody abstraction. [19 Apr 1991, p.C]

The three main performances are uniformly good. Moore maintains a believable air of normalcy pushed into unusual directions. Headly is marvelously kooky, a victim with sporadic moments of spunk. Willis clearly has a blast playing evil unbound. He's disconcertingly good, a whirl of Method-acting menace and goateed aggression.

Mortal Thoughts has a good cast and a lot to recommend it, but what it doesn't have is the kind of dramatic payoff that makes so much extended buildup and explanation seem worthwhile.

Director Alan Rudolph and writers William Reilly and Claude Kerven don't play fair with the audience. They stack the deck and then deal from the bottom, and the result is such a surprise that I felt let down, even angry. I don't mind not figuring out who the murderer is, but Rudolph should show the viewer a few things along the way to allow it to be figured out. [19 Apr 1991, p.3F]

Throughout the film Rudolph is working hard to put this thing over, mixing in slow-motion and shock cuts. But his heart is not really in it. His technique is both too good and not enough for this material, and it doesn't sit right. He's trying to glamorize dread. [19 Apr 1991, p.F1]

Directed by Alan Rudolph (Choose Me), this tedious film, rife with flashbacks and slow-motion sequences that underscore the already overbearing plot and exaggerated characters, fails both as a mystery and as a statement on marital violence.