The Unseen Ridley Scott Film Festival, Part 3: Someone to Watch Over Me – DVD Review
Welcome to The Dork Report’s first themed mini film festival: the unseen works of director Ridley Scott. Unseen, that is, by me, until now.
- Part I: The Duellists
- Part II: Legend
- Part III: Someone to Watch Over Me
- Part IV: Black Rain
- Part V: White Squall
- Part VI: G.I. Jane
- Part VII: Kingdom of Heaven
- Part VIII: A Good Year
- Part IX: Body of Lies
Ridley Scott’s Someone to Watch Over Me (1987) is more of a drama than a police thriller, refreshingly focussed on its characters over suspense and action alone. Mike Keegan (Tom Berenger) is a salt-of-the-earth Queens detective assigned to protect material witness Claire (Mimi Rogers) from assassination. Keegan is a modest family man, recently promoted to the second rung of the police hierarchy. It’s no glamorous job; he spends most of his working hours just sitting around not finishing crosswords. He’s utterly unlike the over-the-top testosterone-laden cop character played by Michael Douglas in Scott’s other police thriller, Black Rain (to be reviewed as Part Four in The Unseen Ridley Scott Film Festival).
Any dame what lives in a spread like this is outta yer league, pal
Keegan is more-or-less happily married (to Lorraine Bracco as Ellie), but a man like him would never otherwise come into contact with a beautiful uptown girl like Claire. Cooped up in close proximity to each other every night, they inevitably lapse into an affair. Her effeminate but wealthy and powerful husband senses that Keegan is a romantic rival, but he is an effectively impotent character and frequently disappears from the film altogether. Also notable is song-and-dance man Jerry Orbach already typecasting himself as a detective in a small role as Keegan’s tough Lieutenant.
When Mimi Rogers heard Director Ridley Scott was big on visual spectacles, this isn’t what she had in mind
One of the guaranteed pleasures of any Ridley Scott film is the visuals. Someone to Watch Over Me’s opening credits feature the namesake song by George Gershwin sung by Sting over beautifully sleek aerial shots of New York City at night. The final shootout is perfectly staged in a claustrophobically enclosed space, with huge mirrors placed for maximum dramatic impact. The principals stalk each other in near silence, punctuated by the wide dynamics of sound design. Perhaps Scott was competing with that other upstart master of cinematic shootouts, Michael Mann (in particular, the similarly explosive conclusion to the contemporary thriller Manhunter).
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Tags: action, drama, Ridley Scott, suspense, thriller
(Possibly) Related Posts:
- The Unseen Ridley Scott Film Festival, Part 4: Black Rain – DVD Review
- The Unseen Ridley Scott Film Festival, Part 1: The Duellists – DVD Review
- The Unseen Ridley Scott Film Festival, Part 6: G.I. Jane – DVD Review
Written by Chad Ossman
