A derailed story about a fatal attraction. (Obsessed (Blu-ray))

Member Name: FairyG

Product:	Obsessed (Blu-ray)
Date:	24/06/09 (41 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Idris Elba looks good with his shirt off.

Disadvantages: Weak plot and not exactly compelling performances.

Obsessed belongs to the same genre as Fatal Attraction and Derailed, although with a difference, as this time the man tries hard to resist the seductive clutches of the femme fatale. That won't save him though.

Derek Charles (Idris Elba) has a dream life and a dream family. He's a highly successful asset-manager married to his voluptuous ex-assistant Sharon (Beyonce Knowles), and has a cute toddler son. The three of them have just moved house and it seems they have the perfect future cut out for them. But it all starts to go wrong when he meets the flirtatious new temp Lisa (Ali Larter) in the lift at work, and begins a friendly, jokey working relationship that he carefully keeps within strict boundaries.

But Lisa seems to read something more into everything he says and does. His colleague Derek (Jerry O'Donnell) notices the way she behaves around him and points out, "A lot of single girls see the workplace as their hunting ground, and I think this one has you in her cross-hairs."

It doesn't help that Derek finds her attractive. He knows he's on dangerous ground, and decides to tell his wife, but before he gets the chance, things start to escalate to a level where it's all out of his control. Having worked with him, Sharon knows his reputation for office flirtations, and it's inevitable she's going to be suspicious when she meets the new temp. Especially when she sees that Lisa is not as plain as she'd been led to believe.

Idris Elba has a sexy screen presence as Derek that just oozes testosterone, especially when he's got his shirt off. He really is attractive enough for a woman as nutty as Lisa to become obsessed about. He's somewhat bland though as a character, and somehow lacks the depth of personality that would have made him more charismatic.

Ali Larter plays the dangerous blonde in Heroes and she plays the role of Lisa in a similar style, with a lot of flirtatious leg-crossing, artful eye contact and pouting. The camera focuses often on her legs, indicating that men's eyes are drawn there. She's well cast in this, as being so well known in Heroes she is now fairly typecast as the manipulative and self-serving temptress.

Beyonce Knowles isn't exactly a strong actress, but fortunately most of the time all she has to do is look sexy in the role of Sharon. She does play a bigger part in the second half of the film, where she makes a great show of being the angry wife, that's actually more irritating than anything. Her anger is way over the top and poor Derek starts to look like more and more of a victim being pulled in two directions by two determined and not exactly rational women.

As a man-stalked-by-crazy-woman kind of thriller, much of it has been done before. A lot of things that feature in the end of the film are foregrounded at the beginning which is a bit annoying as it's not hard to figure out what's going to happen. There really isn't any need for it. Also, the plot is painfully contrived in places. For instance every time Derek tries to tell someone about what's happening, something conveniently happens to intervene.
So far as tension goes, there's a total lack of it in the first half of the film, and it all starts to get a big yawn-making. It does pick up and get more exciting in the second half, but not enough to make it a great thriller.

Fatal Attraction had a huge effect on audiences at the time (1987) and there was a lot of discussion in the press about the influence it was having on men's attitudes to infidelity. It left us forever with the term 'bunny boiler' as a description for obsessive women. This one just doesn't carry that kind of shock power. Derailed was also more effective as a thriller, with several unexpected twists and turns, and Clive Owen was much stronger in the part of a man who's got himself in too deep.

However, Obsessed is a film that reflects issues of the 21st century, when freedom-loving career women very often don't marry young and start to feel desperate to land a man when their body clock starts ticking in their thirties. Sexual harassment in the workplace is mostly, though not always, seen as men harassing women, but the interesting thing about this film is the way it's all so neatly flipped around to make the man the frightened victim. I tried reversing the roles in my head to see how it would appear, and it really would be unacceptable, and in fact in places it would count as attempted rape.

As thrillers go it's not really worth spending much money on, although it's probably okay for a night in with a rented dvd. It's mildly entertaining, but doesn't really draw the viewer in enough to be gripping.

Director: Steve Shill
Running time: 108 minutes
Certificate: 12A

This review is also on Helium under my pen name A Marshall

Summary: Missable